There were 3.1 million “green jobs” in the US as of November 2011. Green jobs are growing faster than overall job growth in the US. They pay well, and there’s an increasingly wide range of them accessible to Americans of every level of education and experience, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s “
Counting up to green” analysis of the Labor Dept. Bureau of Labor Statistic’s (BLS) groundbreaking
Green Jobs report, which was released Sept. 28.
Clean Technica (
http://s.tt/1pKqJ)
Clean Technica
October 11, 2012
At the end of 2011, white median wealth was 44.5 times higher than black median wealth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
ColorLines
October 11, 2012
“We’re in a goddamn recession and it’s hurting people,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
Although technically our economy is no longer in a recession and is growing slowly, Mishel says the labor market is still dealing with its lasting and permanent impact.
“The weight of unemployment depresses wage and benefit growth for everybody. That has a much greater impact on low-income households and minorities,” said Mishel.
ABC News
October 10, 2012
“The data suggest that at least we’re not shedding a lot of teacher jobs any more. That’s a really nice first step, but there’s still so much to make up,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
Considering public schools were slashing jobs in the four years leading up to July, the recent gains are hardly enough to bridge the gap.
Over that time period, enrollment in public schools was projected to grow by about 377,000 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
To keep up, schools would have had to hire about 62,000 workers, Shierholz estimates. Instead, they laid off about 315,000.
CNNMoney
October 10, 2012
“It’s a shock to hear that anybody can think that these numbers were manipulated,” say Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, in the accompanying interview with The Daily Ticker. “Having followed these numbers for 25 years and knowing the people who put them out it’s absolutely bizarre…It’s outrageous. The data is based on surveys of tens of thousands of employers and households every month.”
CNBC
October 10, 2012
“Some of the decline in labor force participation – I would estimate about a third – since the beginning of the Great Recession would have happened anyway,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s structural.”
The Fiscal Times
October 10, 2012
This is not the first time aspersions have been cast on the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington. In 1971, President Richard Nixon was angered when the BLS attributed a drop in the unemployment rate from 6.2 percent to 5.6 percent in a month to a statistical fluke, says the EPI website.
The Christian Science Monitor
October 10, 2012
Economics reporter Jeff Madrick detailed how the lingering jobs crisis is decimating the middle class and compared the two presidential candidates’ proposals to address it.
The New York Review of Books
October 5, 2012
Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson also used EPI’s research to delve into Romney’s economic plans.
Rolling Stone
October 5, 2012
And New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof bemoaned the nation’s staggering wealth disparity and ever-growing inequality. “Our wealth has become so skewed that the top 1 percent possesses a greater collective worth than the entire bottom 90 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington,” wrote Kristof.
The New York Times
October 5, 2012
Glamour magazine spoke to Elise Gould, EPI’s director of health policy research, to compare the candidates’ stances on health reform and its impact on women.
Glamour
October 5, 2012
New York Times business reporter Annie Lowrey turned to EPI to emphasize the stimulative effects of the payroll tax cut, likely to end next year.
The New York Times
October 2, 2012
Is the system stacked against the bottom fifth earners? Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute, and Nicholas Eberstadt, American Enterprise Institute, offer insight.
CNBC
September 28, 2012
“There is a recovery. There are jobs. There is more income. There is some improvement,” said Lawrence Mishel, a labor market expert at and president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “But the improvement is obviously disappointing,” he added, a sentiment that many economists echoed.
The New York Times
September 28, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute has run the numbers and finds that President Obama’s budget would boost economic growth far more than Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s.
Obama’s plan would create 1.1 million jobs in 2013 and 280,000 jobs in 2014, while Romney’s budget would create 87,000 jobs in 2013 and lose 641,000 jobs in 2014, provided that his plans are deficit-financed, according to a new EPI study (pdf).
Washington Post
September 28, 2012
“Children from rich families have much greater access to higher education than children from low-income families, even when controlling for innate skills,” Economic Policy Institute researchers concluded in a recent report. “This educational barrier places profound limits on income mobility.” And in the tattered recovery from the Great Recession, wages even for college graduates have stagnated. Meritocracy is not only a solution to restoring upward mobility but also a way to fortify the bastions of privilege.
The Atlantic
September 28, 2012
In 1955, at the height of union strength, the wealthiest 10 percent received 33 percent of the nation’s personal income. In 2007, they received 50 percent, Economic Policy Institute data show.
Washington Post
September 26, 2012
“Children from rich families have much greater access to higher education than children from low-income families, even when controlling for innate skills,” Economic Policy Institute researchers concluded in a recent report. “This educational barrier places profound limits on income mobility.”
National Journal
September 26, 2012
It may be hard to imagine, but (we all hope, anyway) some day the recession and meager recovery period will come to an end. At that point, will the debates we’re having now about the economy become completely irrelevant? What will we have to fight about? Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal and EPI’s Josh Bivens took this question on in the latest Fireside Chats episode on Bloggingheads:
New New Deal
September 25, 2012
Extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich would would boost the economy by an almost negligible amount, according to a recent analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute — far less for GDP growth than continuing stimulus measures. Letting the tax cuts expire wouldn’t hurt job growth either, according to data from a University of California at Berkeley economist, cited by Mother Jones.
Huffington Post
September 25, 2012
But separate surveys by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and Generation Opportunity found little evidence that young people were going back to school when unable to land a job.
One deterrent is the rising cost of education and record levels of student debt. About two-thirds of 2012 college graduates left school in debt, owing on average $28,700 in student loans, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org.
“Young people dropping out of the labor force to go back to school would be a silver lining if it were true,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior EPI economist, adding that enrollment had gradually been increasing for decades.
Reuters
September 25, 2012
Social Security remains most boomers’ hope for retirement income. On average, U.S. workers are beginning to take their Social Security benefits at age 63.8. That average fell by more than five years between 1945 and 1970. After that, though, the average has stayed fairly stable, noted Monique Morrissey, an economist who wrote “The Myth of Early Retirement” last year.
But Morrissey cautions against measuring “retirement” by Social Security take-up rates alone. Forty-five percent of eligible Social Security households continue to earn money from a job or jobs.
Buffalo News
September 25, 2012
“Who is expected to gain confidence from rising share prices? Presumably the dreaded one-percenters — the most likely group to personally own stocks. Or maybe we should expand that to the ten-percenters, who, according to the Economic Policy Institute, own 81 percent of our stock market.”
Fiscal Times
September 21, 2012
EPI health policy director Elise Gould explained to Kaiser Health News’s Phil Galewitz how health reform has been essential to reducing the uninsurance rate among young adults, as it allows them to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. “I have no other explanation for that decline than the health law because the economy has not been particularly kind to that age group, and it’s not likely that they all got great jobs,” said Gould.
Kaiser Health News
September 21, 2012
“Politicians of both parties have supported bills aimed at ending Chinese currency manipulation. The topic also could appeal to an electorate hurting for jobs. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated earlier this month that the U.S. had lost more than 2.7 million jobs over 10 years as a result of its trade deficit with China.”
U.S. News and World Report
September 21, 2012
In a video segment for Reuters, EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey commended the United States for filing another trade case against China, with the latest complaint focused on China’s illegal subsidies to exporters of auto parts. “Waiting any longer [to take action] would have been bad for U.S. workers,” said Eisenbrey.
Reuters
September 21, 2012
Health experts credit a provision in the federal health law which took effect in September 2010, which allows families to keep adult children on their health plans until age 26. The Obama administration said about 3 million people have gained coverage from this provision.
“I have no other explanation for that decline than the health law because the economy has not been particularly kind to that age group, and it’s not likely that they all got great jobs,” said Elise Gould, director of health policy research at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Kaiser Health News
September 18, 2012
“Austerity will increase poverty both through cuts in programs, like unemployment insurance extensions, and through job loss,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank based in Washington.
MarketWatch
September 13, 2012
For a more detailed examination, see the Economic Policy Institute’s new edition of The State of Working America (pp. 99-106). The authors attribute fully one-third of the one percent’s doubling of U.S. income share since 1979 to the shift from capital to labor. That’s money that used to go to working people.
The New Republic
September 13, 2012
“We got just enough job growth to keep up with population growth, but not enough to start digging us out of the hole left by the Great Recession,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research center.
McClatchy
September 13, 2012