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Despite escalating costs and recent debates as to whether obtaining a four-year degree is worth it, having a college education is still the best route to financial success.
The Economic Policy Institute found that those with a four-year college degree made 98 percent more per hour on average in 2013 than those without a degree.
As college tuition and education-related expenses continue to escalate, it’s more important than ever to calculate how much you need to save and start saving early. And enrolling in a college savings program can help you meet your financial goals.
WTOP July 18, 2014 -
As the Economy Policy Institute (EPI) notes,
Tipped workers — whose wages typically fall in the bottom quartile of all U.S. wage earners, even after accounting for tips — are a growing portion of the U.S. workforce. Employment in the full-service restaurant industry has grown over 85 percent since 1990, while overall private-sector employment grew by only 24 percent. In fact, today more than one in 10 U.S. workers is employed in the leisure and hospitality sector, making labor policies for these industries all the more central to defining typical American work life.
EPI also cites research that the poverty rate of tipped workers is nearly double that of other workers (as the chart below indicates), and that tipped employees are 3 times more likely to be on food stamps.
VOX July 18, 2014 -
— The vast majority of white students, including poor students, are in classrooms with other students who aren’t poor. But most minority students are in classrooms with other students living in poverty. The Economic Policy Institute: http://bit.ly/TmoGmC.
Politico July 10, 2014 -
The issue in part is that STEM is in many ways too broad a classification to describe the complicated job market right now. A May 2014 report from the Government Accountability Office found that employment and wage outcomes could vary widely between healthcare STEM jobs, so-called “core STEM” jobs, and other STEM jobs.
“STEM makes no sense as a category. What you have is science and engineering, and then you have this IT labor force,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “It’s a non-differentiated category that makes no analytic sense.”
Lumping all STEM occupations together can therefore muddy the waters of studying the supposed STEM shortage. On the other hand, STEM is a good descriptor of where America’s job applicants are falling short, says another expert.
VOX July 10, 2014 -
So far, the federal government has largely stayed out of the way. Congress has not taken up President Barack Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from $7.25. And with the exception of a few companies, like Costco, In-N-Out Burger and Boloco, businesses haven’t taken the initiative to create higher paying jobs.
Puzder made $4.4 million in 2012, according to Forbes. That’s about 291 times what a minimum wage worker makes in a year, if they’re earning the federal minimum and working full-time. The average fast food CEO made 721 times what minimum wage workers took in in 2013, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Huffington Post July 10, 2014 -
“It’s really a political talking point that’s managed its way into legislation,” said Tom Quaadman, vice president of the capital markets center for the Chamber of Commerce, during a 2012 effort by business groups and congressional Republicans to repeal it.
A report released last month by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank, found that top executives at the nation’s 350 top publicly traded firms are getting paid nearly 300 times that of the average worker, earning an average of $15.2 million each in 2013.
“The fact that CEOs make almost 300 times what workers make should set off alarms,” said institute President Lawrence Mishel about the report.
“CEOs are making more and more while workers are making less — even when worker productivity is skyrocketing,” he said.
The Hill July 10, 2014 -
The ruling evokes the problems that hindered organizing back in the 1990s, when SEIU first started reaching out to home health aides in California. The high turnover and poverty wages made it a challenge to persuade workers to invest in any organizing project. But the union combined grassroots outreach with community education to enlist both local officials and consumers behind the union, and Illinois followed in 2003, turning homecare workers into official state employees and weaving together a strong union shop from thousands of individual providers in separate homes.
Unionization paid off once the workers were hooked into the collective bargaining system. According to the Economic Policy Institute, wages jumped by 65 percent over a decade, workers gained health insurance coverage and job training, and recently negotiated to establish a formal grievance procedure. Home healthcare programs in California and Washington have seen similar gains in wages and benefits, which would otherwise be extremely rare in the in-home workforce.
The Nation July 10, 2014 -
Lots of talk has percolated recently about whether a sudden burst of rapid wage growth would force the Fed’s hand in pulling back monetary stimulus to the U.S. economy. Some who, like me, do not see any evidence of an imminent wage take-off have argued that the Fed should wait for some evidence of wage inflation before hitting the brakes.
These arguments essentially treat a pickup of wage growth as a problem to be guarded against. But the most conspicuous failure in the U.S. economy over the past generation, by far, has been too slow wage growth for the vast majority of American workers. A recent report that I co-authored with colleagues from the Economic Policy Institute showed that a range of pressing economic problems–rising income inequality, failure to rapidly reduce poverty, failure to rapidly increase mobility, and even the too-sluggish recovery from the Great Recession–are rooted in the failure of most American workers’ hourly wages to come anywhere close to matching the growth rate of productivity.
Wall Street Journal July 10, 2014 -
Who needs a raise? Nearly everyone, it turns out. Hourly wages in the U.S. are growing a modest 2 percent this year, keeping Americans barely ahead of inflation (or miles behind it if you happen to be strolling down the meat aisle at your local grocery store).
This is older news than you might think. Wages have been stagnant not only since the epic recession that followed the 2008 housing crash, but for decades. In 1979, median production and non-supervisory workers (who account for 80 percent of all private-sector employees) made an inflation-adjusted $15.75 an hour. As of 2013, that pay had inched up only to $16.70 — that’s a total gain of 6.1 percent over 34 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CBS Moneywatch July 10, 2014 -
There were 4.72 million hires in May, up 3% from the end of 2013, according to U.S. Labor Department data. But over that same time period, job openings rose 18% to 4.64 million at the end of May.
“There are simply more and more unfilled openings,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities, wrote in a research note.
Over at the Economic Policy Institute, a left leaning think tank based in Washington, economist Heidi Shierholz wrote in a blog post that hiring needs to pick up for the labor market to experience a full recovery.
“Hiring is the side of that equation that, while generally improving, has not yet come close to a full recovery,” Shierholz wrote.
Market Watch July 10, 2014 -
Ned Resnikoff: The thing about picking a high-wage career is that unemployment is elevated across the board, even in STEM industries like engineering and so on. Just today, the Economic Policy Institute observed that unemployment in just about every field – including finance, health care, and business services – far outstrips the number of available job openings. So what are these other careers that thousands of yoga instructors should be crossing into?
There’s a reason why the gig economy, which includes yoga teachers and other independent contractors, is expanding so quickly: With unemployment so elevated among full-time professionals, freelancing on the side might be the only way to pay the bills. It just so happens that when you dive into the precarious world of independent contracting, you expose yourself to a whole host of other risks.
MSNBC July 10, 2014 -
The economy continues to be afflicted by over 5 million “missing workers” who are neither employed nor actively seeking work. Some of these workers are over the age of 55, and perhaps simply in a state of irrevocable early retirement. But as this chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows, over 3 million of them are in prime working years and another 1.5 million are below the age of 25.
Macroeconomic policy dedicated to preventing currently employed workers from ever securing a raise essentially guarantees that no employer will ever face a strong business case for taking a risk on these missing workers. Yet keeping millions of able-bodied adults out of the workforce will do permanent harm to the American economy.
VOX July 10, 2014 -
The unemployment number can also mask how many people are among the long-term unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates long-term joblessness is dropping — but this figure only counts the number of unemployed people looking for work. Those who find jobs often can’t keep them. And if you give up looking for work, you drop off the list the same way as a newly employed person would. However, erasure from the job market still entitles people to have opinions on the economy — and they probably aren’t feeling too good about it.
In addition, wages have stagnated for many workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post July 10, 2014 -
A group of education advocates is calling on the District to release more information about students’ performance on city tests, arguing that the limited data released in years past has overstated city schools’ progress.
Elaine Weiss of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education — a group that has been critical of education policies that have taken root in the District, such as charter schools and test-based accountability — wrote in an analysis to be released Thursday that “lack of transparency, combined with cherry-picking specific numbers” has enabled the city to “paint a false picture of progress,” particularly among poor and African American students.Washington Post July 10, 2014 -
Ross Eisenbrey helped with this.
New York Times July 3, 2014 -
The question of whether college is worth ithas put higher education under the microscope for several years.
With the average student loan debt at $29,400, according to the Institute for College Access & Success, and unemployment of recent college graduates at 8.5% and underemployment at 16.8%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, it may be difficult for some to answer that college is worth it.
But the question is more complex than that. Here are some things to consider when deciding if you should choose any college at all.
USA Today July 3, 2014 -
Affirmative action in college admissions for African Americans has been losing support in the United States for some time, with new “colorblind” methods of ending gaining ground in the courts. In this powerful defense of affirmative action, Richard Rothstein explains why pretending color doesn’t matter doesn’t actually work and why it is unfair. Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. He is also senior fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law, and he is the author of books including “Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, and “Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.” He was a national education writer for The New York Times as well. This first appeared in the American Prospect.
Washington Post July 3, 2014 -
In March, President Obama announced an executive order to update the rules, which will readjust the classification exemptions as well as the salary threshold—although it’s not clear by how much as it is still in public comment mode. But if the limit were raised to $50,440 a year, as proposed by the Economic Policy Institute, about ten million people would be brought into overtime protection. That wouldn’t just mean extra pay in their pockets for working more hours. It could also make employers think harder about asking people to stay over 40 hours, thus bringing back the nine-to-five world we long said good-bye to.
The New Republic July 3, 2014 -
Also in U.S. News & World Report, Economic Times, Salon, Herald Online, The Kansas City Star, Daily Journal, The Telegraph, The News Tribune, MSN Money, Star Tribune, The Chronicle Journal, Fox News
Private payrolls provider ADP said Wednesday that businesses added 281,000 jobs in June. The figure suggests that the government’s jobs report could bring a pleasant surprise. But the ADP numbers cover only private businesses, and they often diverge from the government’s more comprehensive reportIn May, the economy surpassed its jobs total in December 2007, when the Great Recession started. But economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimate that 7 million more jobs would have been needed to keep up with population growth.
Many people who lost jobs during the recession and were never rehired have stopped looking for work. Just 62.8 percent of adult Americans are working or are looking for a job, compared with 66 percent before the recession.
Average wages, meanwhile, have grown just 2 percent a year during the recovery, below the long-run average annual growth of about 3.5 percent.
Associated Press July 3, 2014 -
(Also in Christian Science Monitor)
The “union shop” concept is based on the idea that, since government employees are covered by collective bargaining, they must help cover the costs of that bargaining whether they choose to join the union or not.Monday’s decision means that workers in the gray area of home health aides are no longer subject to paying that kind of fee. Labor-union allies say the ruling undercuts bargaining efforts that have won substantial wage and benefit gains in a very low-wage industry.
“Most home health care workers had no health insurance themselves” and earned around the minimum wage before they got union representation, says Ross Eisenbrey, a labor law expert at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The case pitted Pamela Harris, a home care worker who argued that the union fees violated her constitutional free-speech rights, against Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) and the union SEIU Healthcare Illinois (part of the Service Employees International Union).
Yahoo News July 1, 2014 -
Just two percent of the job losses during the recession occurred because businesses moved to another state or country, Mazerov said. “What accounts for how well states do … is stimulating the birth of new business,” he added.
Most states have no way of knowing if a tax break had a direct impact on business retention or hiring, said Joshua Smith, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank focused on low-paid workers. But “it’s a zero-sum game, anyway,” since one state’s gain is another’s loss, he added. Smith said states would be better off using the revenues to fund infrastructure building and repair to create jobs.
The Rhode Island tax cut will drop the levy on corporations from 9 percent to 7 percent; the Indiana law, part of a long-term, phased tax cut, lowers corporate taxes from 7.5 percent to 7 percent.
USA Today July 1, 2014 -
(Also in Atlanta Daily World)
Sixty years after the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education integrated the nation’s classrooms, black and white students still largely attend different schools, even during their earliest years.A recent analysis from liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) outlines the severe segregation that exists among kindergarten classrooms. The analysis, which used data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11, looked at kindergarten classrooms through the lenses of race and income.
The Huffington Post July 1, 2014 -
Here, from the non-profit Economic Policy Institute, is a snapshot of how segregated public schools are, starting in kindergarten. It was written by Elaine Weiss and Emma García. Weiss has served as the national coordinator for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Educationsince 2011. García, who joined the Economic Policy Institute in 2013, specializes in the economics of education and education policy. EPI was created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers.
The Washington Post July 1, 2014 -
Courts for years have recognized the rights of unions to ask non-members to pay dues for union negotiating costs, but a group of home healthcare workers in Harris vs. Quinn are challenging dues they pay to a branch of the Service Employees International Union as a violation of free speech.
The case is pitting business groups and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation against labor giants like the SEIU, which worry the court could rule broadly to prevent all non-members of public sector unions from being compelled to pay dues.
Such a decision from the court, which is expected to rule on Monday, could deliver a “kill shot” to organized labor at a time when it is already struggling with a declining membership.
Still, some labor supporters say they’re anticipating a loss.
“I expect the worst,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
The case was brought by Pamela Harris, who receives money from the state of Illinois to take care of her son.
The Hill June 30, 2014 -
At this stage in the recovery —f ive years after the U.S. officially emerged from recession, labor economists would like to see the “quits rate” rise. It’s a measure of the percentage of people voluntarily leaving their employment — rather than being laid off or having a contract end. Workers might leave a job if they’ve been recruited for another one, or even to look for another job without having one already lined up. Or, they might quit to go back to school, or retire, or take a break from work altogether.
“When the economy is strong, people are more likely to be able to quit the job they’re in,” says labor economist Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute, “to take another job that has better opportunities for wage growth and advancement, perhaps it better matches their skills and interests.”
Since plummeting at the start of the Great Recession, the quits rate has been gradually rising. But (at 1.8 percent in April 2014, the most recent month for Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting), the quits rate is still nearly 20 percent below its pre-recession level, says Shierholz, and nowhere near what would be expected in a robust economy with plenty of job opportunities.
Marketplace June 30, 2014 -
Ikea had this very notion in mind when it announced that it would raise the minimum wage of its employees. The hourly wage for each store will be based on the cost of living in that particular area, ranging from $8.69 to $13.22.
Because most workers’ wages are lower in states where prices are relatively low, a $10.10 minimum wage will tend to reach a lot more workers in Alabama than in Connecticut. According to an analysis by David Cooper at the Economic Policy Institute, the proposed federal increase would lift the pay of 24 percent of Alabama’s work force, but only 14 percent of Connecticut’s.
Some states and cities have already taken this matter into their own hands, setting their own minimum wages above the federal level to account for price and wage differences. (They have also done this because the federal minimum wage has become a political football that is often fumbled.)
New York Times June 30, 2014 -
Our current brand of capitalism is an ersatz capitalism. For proof of this go back to our response to the Great Recession, where we socialized losses, even as we privatized gains. Perfect competition should drive profits to zero, at least theoretically, but we have monopolies and oligopolies making persistently high profits. C.E.O.s enjoy incomes that are on average 295 times that of the typical worker, a much higher ratio than in the past, without any evidence of a proportionate increase in productivity.
If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics. People get tired of hearing about Scandinavian success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality.
New York Times June 30, 2014 -
As Danny Vinik points out, compensation hasn’t risen with productivity for over 40 years. You can see that in the chart below from the Economic Policy Institute. Since 1973, inflation-adjusted wages and benefits have barely increased for most workers, despite increasing productivity.
This is two-card monte, because we’re still waiting for the last one to trickle down. Now, you start by saying that we shouldn’t tax the rich too much, because they’re smarter than everybody else and deserve their wealth. Never mind, as Noah Smith points out, that nobody “deserves” the brains they inherit. Or that, when it comes to IQ, we shouldn’t put too much weight on nature over nurture, since we know, for example, that growing up in poverty can hurt children’s neural development. No, then you admit that it doesn’t matter whether they deserve their money or not. That we still shouldn’t tax the rich too much even if they are layabout heirs. That’s because we need their savings to fund the investments today that will make us all more productive — and hence, better paid — tomorrow.The Washington Post June 27, 2014 -
Indeed, Detroit is the fifth most affordable city in the U.S. for real estate, according to HSH.com, a mortgage-information firm. Residents only need to earn $32,250 a year for a median-priced home — making Detroit more expensive than only Cleveland ($29,788), Pittsburgh ($30,177), St. Louis ($31,275) and Cincinnati ($31,850). (San Francisco was the least affordable; median-price-home buyers need to earn $137,129 a year there.) More than 80% of homes for sale in Detroit are within reach of the middle class, compared with only 20% in New York and Los Angeles and 14% in San Francisco, according to real-estate website Trulia.
It’s also possible to live large in Detroit. “The duplex house I lived in 35 years ago on Detroit’s east side is still a beauty,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute and a resident of Washington, D.C. He recently revisited it: The home has two units, each with leaded-glass windows, fireplace, Florida room, walk-in pantry, two bedrooms and kitchen. It sold for less than $50,000 two years ago. The lot next door can be bought for $1,000. “Once Detroit gets through the bankruptcy, restores city services, and makes progress on job creation, it will be an amazing value,” he adds.
Wall Street Journal June 27, 2014 -
Also, the evidence doesn’t entirely support the idea that policies that encourage businesses to invest more will actually help the average worker. This chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows how worker productivity–which increases when firms invest in equipment that makes workers efficient–has diverged from median pay.
As you can see, over the past 30 years, the growth in productivity and wages have decoupled, giving the middle class voter much less reason to care about whether the wealthy are encouraged to invest in their businesses through the tax code.
Fortune June 24, 2014