Media clips
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This deceleration of growth effectively predates sequestration, but nonetheless coincides (contrary to popular perception) with rapid reduction in the federal budget deficit as a share of GDP — a trend that will continue to restrain growth. On this front, the inaptness of the “cliff” metaphor surely didn’t help.
As Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute and I argued (PDF), the false dichotomy implied by a cliff was a poor framing of both the problem and policy choices actually at hand. This framing helped suggest that the eventual lame duck budget deal was successful because the economy didn’t crash in January 2013. But the budget deal didn’t resolve the problem of deficits closing too quickly, which always risked an ongoing deceleration in growth before andafter January, not an immediate double-dip recession.
The Fiscal Times August 27, 2013 -
Gaping disparities between blacks and whites exist when it comes to unemployment rates (12.6 versus 6.6 percent in July, according to the Labor Department); life expectancy (75 versus 79 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); median family wealth ($4,900 versus $97,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute); and incarceration rates (blacks are 13 percent of the population, but represent 38 percent of inmates in federal and state prisons, according to the Sentencing Project).
The Hill August 27, 2013 -
While much ground has been gained with the end of state-sanctioned segregation, blacks overall are still more likely to be undereducated, unemployed and live in substandard housing compared to whites in America, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.
And by all measures, blacks in America still lag behind whites and other groups in overall economic wealth, said author Algernon Austin, who directs the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, and put together the report.
“If we want to honor the march, we have to celebrate what was achieved, but also the unrealized dreams.
NY Daily News August 27, 2013 -
In 2013, it’s jarring to realize just how much of Dr. King’s dream remains unrealized. For example, take these sobering statistics, from a recent Economic Policy Institute report by Algernon Austin:
[T]oday, nearly half of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty; however, only a little more than a tenth of poor white children live in similar neighborhoods.
[Snip]
In the late 1960s, 76.6 percent of black children attended majority black schools. In 2010, 74.1 percent of black children attended majority nonwhite schools.
[Snip]
From the 1960s to today, the black unemployment rate has been about 2 to 2.5 times the white unemployment rate. In 2012, the black unemployment rate was 14.0 percent, 2.1 times the white unemployment rate (6.6 percent) and higher than the average national unemployment rate of 13.1 percent during the Great Depression, from 1929 to 1939.
Washington Monthly August 27, 2013 -
Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said blacks lagged whites for a number of reasons. They include slightly lower levels of education, weaker business networking and the U.S. failure to create good-paying jobs since the 1970s.
But discrimination also plays a role, she said. Studies have shown, for example, that on identical job applications those with white-sounding names are more likely to get callbacks than those with black-sounding names.
Such studies “show that discrimination is still alive and well,” she said.
In 1963, the jobless rate among blacks was 10.9 percent, more than twice that for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Reuters August 27, 2013 -
“In the 1960s, there were a number of occupations that blacks just couldn’t get — you were categorically blocked,” said Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. “Now you can see blacks in almost every occupation — including in the White House.”
But fighting discrimination is like trying to inoculate against a mutating disease: The socially and legally sanctioned discrimination of the 1960s gave way to stealthier-but-still-dangerous forms of bias.
“It’s still the case that while there’s little categorical exclusion, we still see evidence that employers prefer white workers,” Austin said. He pointed to much-cited research that found that people with “black-sounding” names were less likely to be hired for jobs than people without them, even when their qualifications were about the same, and that a white man with a criminal record applying for a job was more likely to receive a response from an employer than a black man without one.
The march’s organizers also hoped to put a dent in the double-digit unemployment rate among blacks (10 percent). That figure hasn’t improved in the 50 years since, according to the Economic Policy Institute; indeed, the black unemployment rate over the last half-century — 11.6 percent — suggests that black America is operating in a permanent economic recession. And since 1963, the average rate of black unemployment has hovered at more than twice the unemployment for whites.
(During the recent recession, black unemployment crept up to nearly 15 percent.)
Those dismal numbers might still understate just how bad the employment situation is. “To be counted as unemployed, you have to be actively looking for work,” Austin said. ” In communities where it’s very difficult for people to find work, people drop out of the labor work because their chances are so small.” In other words, there are untold numbers of unemployed black folks we’ve just ceased to count.
NPR August 27, 2013 -
Thomas J. Sugrue reminds us, in an excellent essay about why the call for economic justice resonated so loudly in August of 1963, that the full title of the event was “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” The Economic Policy Institute examines the context for the march’s demand for a higher minimum wage.
For the marchers, an increase in the minimum wage was one way to address the high poverty rate among black Americans.
NBC News August 27, 2013 -
The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with wage losses for most workers since then, means that the bottom 60 percent of working Americans are earning less now than thirteen years ago.
The Christian Science Monitor August 27, 2013 -
Despite soaring corporate profits and nearly 25 percent gains in overall workforce productivity, 60 percent of American workers saw their wages stagnate or decline from 2000 to 2012 according to the latest study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank based in Washington D.C. The period has been termed by some economists as the “lost decade” of wage growth for most Americans.
The EPI data validates the claims of the burgeoning fast-food workers movement, uniting low-wage workers behind demands for better pay. In a $200-billion-per-year fast-food industry, paltry wages have become a central grievance of the growing protest movement that could change an industry employing roughly 4 million across the United States.
Mint News August 27, 2013 -
A new paper from the Economic Policy Institute provides both diagnosis and prescription of what is arguably the fundamental problem of the United States economy in recent years: wage stagnation. I’ll briefly describe the findings, but given that these trends have persisted for a long time, it’s more important to think about solutions, particularly ones that go beyond conventional wisdom.
The New York Times August 27, 2013 -
Inequality: Jared Bernstein summarizes a new paper from the Economic Policy Institute on the hollowing out of the middle class. The debate has focused too much on how to reverse inequality and not enough on how to prevent it, Mr. Bernstein says. “This poses a serious problem.
Wall Street Journal August 27, 2013 -
CNN columnist John Sutter called EPI’s Inequality.Is “the best online primer I’ve found” on economic inequality. He wrote, “It explains why inequality is a problem, how it was created and what might fix it.”
CNN August 23, 2013 -
A new report from EPI President Lawrence Mishel and Economist Heidi Shierholz shows that the vast majority of American workers have seen their wages stagnate for a decade. A Decade of Flat Wages: The Key Barrier to Shared Prosperity and a Rising Middle Class is a comprehensive analysis of wage trends that shows that most Americans have not experienced real wage gains, regardless of occupation, race, ethnicity, or education level—including workers with a college degree. At the same time, corporate profits have soared, and the earnings of the top 1 percent have skyrocketed.
August 23, 2013 -
The Rev. Al Sharpton used EPI’s work in a Huffington Post column about the unmet goals of the March on Washington. After citing EPI data on persistent disparities between unemployment rates of blacks and whites, he wrote, “When such blatant inequality exists, how can we ever believe that our work is finished? Dr. King and the over 250,000 gathered with him on that historic day marched for jobs, and today we will continue marching for jobs as inequity persists. Millions of Americans are still desperately seeking work, and yet Congress will not support a jobs bill. So we march.”
The Huffington Post August 23, 2013 -
In the Washington Post’s GovBeat blog, Reid Wilson reported on the latest findings from EARN. The report recommends that state legislators focus their attention on improving education, rather than cutting taxes to lure investment away from other states.
The Washington Post August 23, 2013 -
Washington Post reporter Zachary Goldfarb looked at the challenges facing African Americans as President Obama prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Citing EPI, Goldfarb wrote, “Fifty years ago, the unemployment rate was 5 percent for whites and 10.9 percent for blacks, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Today, it is 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks.”
The Washington Post August 23, 2013 -
EPI President Lawrence Mishel was interviewed on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about his new report, A Decade of Flat Wages. Explaining that wages have been flat across all measures, including education level, Mishel said, “Wages for those in business occupations have been flat for 10 years. Those in science, technology, engineering, and math—so-called STEM occupations—have been flat. It’s hard to look at the data and find that the real problem of wage growth is that people don’t have enough education.”
NPR August 23, 2013 -
Analysts are split over whether the tax increases passed in January have hurt the economy as Congress barrels toward another round of fiscal fights this fall. ….
Thomas Hungerford, a director of budget and tax policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the increases in income taxes have had “no impact” on the economy.
“I think any arguments that raising taxes at the top has probably lost some of its relevance,” said Thomas Hungerford, director of budget and tax policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill August 15, 2013 -
Using that data and the numbers from the bureau’s report on job openings this past week, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., showed there are 3.1 unemployed workers for every job opening.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette August 15, 2013 -
This is well-trodden territory. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that unpaid internships save U.S. companies $600 million dollars a year while locking less privileged young people out of the job market:
Unpaid internships, in particular, exclude students from poorer families who can’t afford to work for nothing for a summer or a semester, especially after they graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt. The children of affluent families, on the other hand, can afford to live in the most expensive cities in the U.S., such as New York and Washington, making contacts, building their resumes, and sometimes even learning skills, while their parents pay for their room and board, travel and entertainment.
Slate August 15, 2013 -
In the first corner, we have Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, which put out a shorter paper along similar lines in June. They argue that unique features of corporate governance in the U.S. have contributed to pay for CEOs that’s significantly above their foreign counterparts, and hold up the financial sector as an area where managers have commanded outlandish salaries out of step even with returns to their shareholders.
The Washington Post August 15, 2013 -
The most compelling argument for raising the minimum wage is a humane one, but it’s also in the best interests of the economy, which is 70 percent consumer driven. A family barely scraping by after working two full-time jobs isn’t going to be doing a lot of pleasure shopping. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the proposed minimum-wage increase would generate more than $32 billion in new economic activity, leading to the creation of 140,000 full-time jobs.
The Associated Press August 15, 2013 -
The Economic Policy Institute has more on the necessity of Social Security for the vast majority of Americans. Only the wealthy, EPI has found, can count on having enough income from private retirement accounts for financial security in old age.
In 2010, households whose income was in the middle fifth percentile of incomes had, on average, only $34,981 in individual retirement savings, while households in the top fifth of incomes averaged $308,674. Other than high-income households, who receive most of the federal subsidies for IRAs and 401(k)s, virtually no one has enough savings to generate substantial retirement income. Social Security wealth and retirement income, on the other hand, are broadly shared.
Daily Kos August 15, 2013 -
Also, 74% said their retirement account has recovered from the financial crisis “about as fast” or “even faster” than expected.
And 55% of the savers in the Schwab survey said they hiked their savings rate in the past two years, while 70% said their 401(k) “is in better shape now than ever before.”
That’s a welcome trend, because many retirement savers are falling behind, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
The report, titled “Social Security is the Only Reason Most Americans Can Afford to Retire,” said that U.S. households in the middle-fifth percentile of income had $34,981 on average in retirement savings, in 2010.
That’s in stark contrast to the average $308,674 saved by households in the top fifth of incomes. Read more on the EPI website.
Want the bad news spelled out? Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, in Washington, said: “Other than high-income households, who receive most of the federal subsidies for IRAs and 401(k)s, virtually no one has enough savings to generate substantial retirement income.”
Wall Street Journal August 15, 2013 -
The economic crisis has precipitated a political crisis in many of these countries, most notably in Greece, where austerity and unemployment have fueled the emergence of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party. Yet the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and the European Central Bank—known collectively as the Troika—are likely to continue demanding that periphery countries focus on debt reduction, said Josh Bivens, research and policy director for the Economic Policy Institute.
“The rate of austerity has slowed somewhat…[but] we haven’t reversed direction entirely,” he said. “We don’t have growth promoting policies going on.”
MSNBC August 15, 2013 -
“In hindsight, the organizers of the march were correct: Achieving rights without fully obtaining the resources to actualize them is only a partial victory. In this 50th anniversary year of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we can best pay tribute to the march and all that it stood for by recommitting to achieving its unfinished goals,” wrote Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. The institute has issued a series of reports examining what it would take to achieve each of the goals of the 1963 March on Washington. Go to www.unfinishedmarch.com to read the essays.
The Washington Post August 15, 2013 -
Writing for the New York Times Economix blog, economist Nancy Folbre cited work by EPI Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Research Robert Scott on international trade and the job losses attributable to trade with China. “A growing body of economic research points to the adverse effects of lowered tariff barriers on manufacturing workers and their communities,” writes Folbre. “Whether or not the losers are beginning to outnumber the winners, free trade is increasing the economic distance between the two.”
The New York Times August 9, 2013 -
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed readers to EPI President Lawrence Mishel’s paper Regulatory Uncertainty: A Phony Explanation for Our Jobs Problem, which Krugman writes is a “thorough debunking” of the idea that economic uncertainty is holding back the economy. Krugman points out that the “uncertainty index” has fallen recently, with “no visible boost to the economy.”
The New York Times August 9, 2013 -
PBS NewsHour talked to Heidi Shierholz about last month’s job creation numbers and the challenges facing our economy. Shierholz told PBS that the economy needs to add 300,000 jobs a month to get to a healthy labor market in the next three years. At the current rate of job creation, it will take at least five years to fill the jobs gap created by the Great Recession.
PBS News Hour August 9, 2013 -
The Wall Street Journal talked to EPI Economist Heidi Shierholz about the worrisome proliferation of low-wage jobs and the effect of high unemployment on incomes. “There’s nothing putting upward pressure on wage growth,” Shierholz told reporter Ben Casselman. “Your employer doesn’t have to pay you big wage increases when they know you don’t have outside options.”
Wall Street Journal August 9, 2013