The other part of Romney’s claim — that wages and employment track productivity — is actually false. Unpublished data from BLS, generously provided to me by the Economic Policy Institute’s Larry Mishel and Nicholas Finio, shows that wages tracked productivity growth until about 1970. After that, wages stagnated even as productivity continued to grow. Here’s EPI’s graph on the matter:
The Washington Post
August 13, 2012
Edelman suggests that the real reasons for persistent poverty include the proliferation of low-wage jobs; a “gaping hole” that’s been ripped in the safety net in terms of vanishing cash assistance for low-income mothers and children; and “persistent issues of race and gender” that lead to higher poverty rates for minorities and families headed by single mothers. He points to research by the Economic Policy Institute showing that half the jobs in the nation pay less than $34,000 a year; and one-quarter pay less than $23,000 annually. Also, wages for jobs in the bottom half have increased just 7 percent since 1972.
The Nation
August 13, 2012
Some 2.8 million American jobs—70 percent of them in manufacturing—have been lost since 2001 because of the U.S. trade deficit with China, according to a recent Economic Policy Institute study. Indeed, consumers visiting a Walmart or Macy’s are hard pressed to find much made in America.
Epoch Times
August 13, 2012
Ryan’s budget would result in 4.1 million lost jobs in 2 years. Ryan’s budget calls for massive reductions in government spending. He has proposed cutting discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, which, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, would suck demand out of the economy and “reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.”
Think Progress
August 13, 2012
“If the economy were healthier, we would expect a larger number of voluntary quits, which would signal that workers are more confident about outside job opportunities,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Reuters
August 8, 2012
“Temp workers are, of course, the first ones to get let go when demand starts to flag,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist with the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
However, for now, their growing share indicates an economy that is slowly and painfully healing—one of the few positives amid the headlines about the fiscal cliff and Europe’s sovereign debt woes leaving the continent in a perpetual crisis.
The Fiscal Times
August 8, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that this minimum-wage increase would generate about $25 billion in economic activity and around 100,000 jobs nationally.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
August 8, 2012
“At July’s rate of job growth it would take more than eight years to get back to full employment,” said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
Wall Street Journal
August 7, 2012
The massive loss of jobs during the recession relative to the monthly job gains is a key concern for economists on both sides.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, has calculated that the “jobs deficit” from before the recession is 9.7 million. At the current average pace of job growth, she said, it would take 10 years for the United States to return to full employment. Even if the rate of job growth were 350,000 a month, the job recovery would take three years, she said.
“Either way, it’s going to be a slog,” she said. “It’s just the hellacious recession that preceded this recovery that makes it look so bad.”
The Washington Post
August 7, 2012
For the first seven months of the year, the economy has averaged a gain of 150,000 jobs. This is just enough to find jobs for new people entering the labor market but not enough to give a boost to the millions of people who have been out of work for an extended period of time.
“This kind of job growth would be totally fine if we were at full employment,” says Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington. “But it is not what we need given the jobs deficit we have.”
The Christian Science Monitor
August 7, 2012
Meanwhile, the already anemic 80,000 jobs created in June was actually lower, with the government revising the number to 64,000. In normal times the labor market needs to create more than 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with the number of people who want to work and that number is much higher now given the trough we’re trying to climb out of. The Economic Policy Institute puts out this sobering statistic: At July’s rate of growth it would take more than eight years to get back to full employment.
Bloomberg
August 7, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-oriented research organization, estimates that raising the minimum wage to $9.80 per hour would generate more than $25 billion in consumer spending, create more than 100,000 full-time jobs and lift wages for close to 30 million workers, since raising the floor affects not only those who earn the minimum but also those who earn slightly more.
The Root
August 3, 2012
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions showed that the schools are essentially using taxpayer subsidies to finance their aggressive recruiting and regulatory manipulation. Based on the Senate’s findings, the Economic Policy Institute put together this chart showing that for-profit schools put more money into recruitment — and pocket more in profits — than they spend on instruction:
Think Progress
August 3, 2012
From NPR:
“This pace of job growth means two things,” writes Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who says the U.S. economy has a deficit of 10 million jobs: “We are not in — nor are we slipping into — another recession, but neither are we getting the kind of job growth that will bring down the unemployment rate. In other words, the labor market is treading water. This would be perfectly fine if we were at full employment, but with the unemployment rate now above 8 percent for 41 months straight, this is an ongoing, severe crisis for the American workforce.”
Minnesota Public Radio
August 3, 2012
The number of Americans working in low-wage jobs — those that pay wages equal to or below the poverty line — will remain steady over the next decade, according to the Economic Policy Institute, as CNNMoney reports:
Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
The study defines low-paying jobs as those with wages at or below what full-time workers must earn to live above the poverty level for a family of four. In 2011, this was $23,005, or $11.06 an hour.
Think Progress
August 3, 2012
As with most Hispanics nationwide, Puerto Ricans here tend to support the president’s economic and health care policies. But Romney has support from Florida’s Puerto Rican business community, and Republicans are walking the neighborhoods in Osceola County on his behalf. Obama won the county handily in 2008, but unemployment in Metro Orlando among Hispanics was above 16 percent in 2011, according to the Economic Policy Institute — nearly double the national and state averages.
Associated Press
August 2, 2012
Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
The study defines low-paying jobs as those with wages at or below what full-time workers must earn to live above the poverty level for a family of four. In 2011, this was $23,005, or $11.06 an hour.
The economy won’t support much growth in jobs with higher salaries, said Rebecca Thiess, policy analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who crunched government data to come up with these projections.
“Far too many economic pundits take for granted that the economy of the future will demand far greater skills and credentials,” she wrote in a recent paper.
CNNMoney
August 2, 2012
Many economists have expressed concern that median wages have stagnated since the 1970s, as illustrated in the following chart from the Economic Policy Institute.
Source: Economic Policy Institute.
For workers in the 10th, 20th and 50th percentiles, median hourly wages haven’t grown much at all since the early 1970s.
The Washington Post
August 1, 2012
“This whole notion that ‘we need to show capital markets we’re serious’ by cutting immediately is ridiculous,” said Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “Chances are, they’ll just factor in the job loss from fiscal contraction and get even more skittish.”
The Fiscal Times
August 1, 2012
That 41.5 percent represents nearly 49 million families, notes Josh Bivens at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. While median family wealth fell by 38.8 percent, Bivens wrote, the wealth of the Walton family members rose from $73.3 billion in 2007 to $89.5 billion in 2010, or about 22 percent growth.
Politifact
August 1, 2012
Ryan’s proposal is undermined is a new study by Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould and researcher Hilary Wething on the extraordinary extent of poverty in America and the appalling weakness of government efforts to reduce it.
The study shows how America has nearly double the percentage of its citizens living in poverty than do other wealthy nations. According to Gould, this directly reflects the relative absence of government effort via tax and transfer programs—like, say, food stamps—that would lift more families out of poverty.
“The relatively low social expenditures in the United States partially explain the high poverty rate,” said Gould. “When it comes to alleviating the effects of poverty, the U.S. could learn from its peers. … The U.S. only spends about half the average amount on social spending that alleviates poverty compared to other advanced nations.”
In These Times
July 31, 2012
From 2007-2009, during the economic recession, the BLS found that government regulation accounted for around 4,300 layoffs — 0.3 percent of all those who lost their jobs. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted that these numbers are especially significant when compared with the number of jobs lost during the recession due to regulatory failures:
The 4,300 figure itself deserves further context. It does not take into account any offsetting job creation that the regulations may have spurred, such as jobs created from the increased demand for the products from companies in compliance with the regulations. More broadly, the 4,300 figure pales in comparison to any accounting of the jobs lost in this period due to the regulatory failures that contributed to the economy’s financial crisis.
Media Matters for America
July 31, 2012
Half the jobs in the nation pay less than $34,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A quarter pay below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually.
The New York Times
July 30, 2012
The Economic Policy Institute estimated that the new initiatives in the AJA would increase GDP by 1.9 percent, while policy extensions it included would increase GDP by another 1.4 percent.
Think Progress
July 30, 2012
“Policymakers must act to provide more support to the economy if they want it to grow fast enough to start putting sustained downward pressure on today’s still too-high unemployment rate,” economist Josh Bivens wrote in his analysis for the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. The unemployment rate is 8.2 percent.
NPR
July 30, 2012
“This is the sign of an economy stuck in neutral, as well as a sign that policymakers must act to provide more support to the economy if they want it to grow fast enough to start putting sustained downward pressure on today’s still too-high unemployment rate,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
July 30, 2012
Since low-wage workers tend to plow any extra wages right back into their local communities—whether that means getting their cars or homes fixed, going out for a meal with their families, or buying clothes for their growing kids—raising the minimum wage to $9.80 per hour over three years would boost economic activity by over $25 billion over those years. This would create about 100,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
US News and World Report
July 24, 2012
The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
July 24, 2012
In fact, the EPA toxics regulations could lead “to the creation of 84,500 jobs between now and 2015,” says the think tank Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post
July 24, 2012
As EPI budget analyst Ethan Pollack pointed out to me the other day (and as CBPP has stressed in tax reform trap discussions) the only time for democrats to safely engage in tax reform discussions is when ample revenue flows are already locked into place, as they would be under Gale’s plan. Otherwise, lower-the-rates-broaden-the-base risks being reduced to just lower-the-rates.
The Huffington Post
July 24, 2012