Media clips
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Cutting discretionary spending in the debt ceiling deal. The deal the GOP extracted as the price for avoiding default imposed around $900 billion in cuts over ten years. It included $30.5 billion in discretionary cuts in 2012 alone, costing the country 0.3 percent in economic growth and 323,000 jobs, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. Starting in 2013, the deal will trigger another $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.
Think Progress July 9, 2012 -
The pace of churn is tied to the unemployment rate–which, in turn, is tied to business and employer confidence–and generally moves in the same direction as the headline rate. But while both have shown slow, steady improvement over the past three years, churn has risen much more slowly, as the above graph indicates. That glacial pace of improvement provides a more accurate snapshot of the recovery.
“The unemployment rate is overstating improvements right now because so many people are dropping out” of the labor force, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
The difference is in the denominators. Unemployment is measured by dividing the number of people out of work by the number working and seeking work, also known as the labor force. When people give up looking for work, they drop out of the labor force, shrinking the denominator and bringing down the unemployment rate more rapidly than it would decline through job creation alone.
National Journal July 6, 2012 -
David Brancaccio: A new, worrying hint this morning about America’s job market. The number of people signing up for unemployment benefits rose by 13,000 over the last week. That puts the seasonally-adjusted number at 380,000. The consensus of economists was for the number to fall. So, a surprise and not a good one.
Heidi Shierholz is a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Ms. Shierholz, thanks for joining us live.
Heidi Shierholz: Thanks for having me.
Brancaccio: So these new unemployment claims for the past week. What do you make of this?
Shierholz: OK, you never want to see these things go up. That is — you want to see them going in the right direction: heading down. But I’m not too worried about what happened this time around — that increase of 13,000 — it’s not a huge spike, and there is a ton of week-to-week variation in these numbers. So we haven’t seen a lot of improvement in the last couple of months, but the overall trend, if you eyeball this thing, going back the last couple of years is a pretty steady improvement. So we want to keep our eyes on it; we don’t want this thing to go up — but I’m not too worried about what we saw in the numbers this morning.
Brancaccio: We also learned this week, Heidi, that more Americans are quitting their jobs on their own volition, because they want to. What does that tell you?
Shierholz: Yeah, it’s sort of counter-intuitive, right? But that’s actually very good news for the labor market. In a really dynamic labor market, where there’s lots of job opportunities, that means there’s not just job opportunities for unemployed people — there’s also job opportunities for people with jobs. One of the ways people in this labor market see advancement, see wage increases, is through quitting the job they have and moving to one that’s a better match for them — a better fit for their skills, their experience, with better wages. So the fact that we’re seeing people voluntarily leave their jobs, and presumably in many cases taking another job, that is actually is a very good sign of healing in the labor market.
Marketplace July 6, 2012 -
Black unemployment in May was at 13.6 percent, an increase of six-tenths of a percent from the month before. The national unemployment rate is only 8.2 percent.
But while we’ve known for a long time that Black unemployment significantly outpaces the national unemployment rates, new data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows just how bad things have gotten in some of America’s most diverse and important cities.
BET.com July 6, 2012 -
Young job-seekers may find themselves sweating it this summer.
Unemployment for Americans under 25 remains high at 16.4 percent — twice the national average — and underemployment is also a concern, especially for college grads, according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute.
WYNC News July 6, 2012 -
A new study shows Minneapolis-St. Paul leading the nation in a category no one is celebrating: of 19 major metropolitan areas, the Twin Cities metro area has the widest gap in unemployment rate between blacks and whites.
During 2011, the jobless rate for African Americans in the Twin Cities averaged nearly 18 percent, more than three-times that of white residents. That’s by far the biggest disparity of all the metropolitan areas covered in a study from the Economic Policy Institute.
Minnesota Public Radio July 5, 2012 -
According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), African Americans and Hispanics are still at a disadvantage when it comes to employment in some metro areas.
The EPI scanned 19 metro areas with large African American populations and 25 metros with large Hispanic populations. Both studies found that unemployment in 2011 was higher than the national rate for African Americans and Hispanics in several metro areas.
Marketplace July 5, 2012 -
The Twin Cities have the highest level of racial disparity in unemployment in the country, according to a study released on Monday. The Economic Policy Institute found that African-Americans in the Twin Cities metropolitan area were 3.3 times as likely to be unemployed as whites in 2011 – the highest level of disparity among 19 major metropolitan areas in the nation.
Unfortunately, this high level of unemployment disparity between blacks and whites in our area is not new. Two years ago we blogged on an EPI study finding that back then the Twin Cities also had the highest level of unemployment disparity among 18 major metropolitan areas.
Twin Cities Daily Planet July 5, 2012 -
Unemployment among blacks stood at 17.7 percent in 2011, which was 3.1 times the jobless rate of whites in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. That disparity rate is unchanged from a similar report issued two years ago by the same organization, the Economic Policy Institute. Then the metro area also ranked the worst in the country among selected cities.
Minneapolis Star Tribune July 3, 2012 -
Metro Orlando had the second-highest rate of Hispanic unemployment in the nation last year, according to a report issued Monday by the Economic Policy Institute.
The jobless rate was 16.6 percent among Hispanics, researchers found, more than twice the unemployment rate of white residents. The Orlando area was second only to Providence, R.I., where the Hispanic unemployment rate was 23.3 percent.
Orlando Sentinel July 3, 2012 -
Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute notes that that’s just a dollar above the federal poverty level. This for a company that paid nine of its top executives a total of $441 million in 2011.
“The discrepancy between Apple’s profits/executive pay and its compensation to its workers is a particularly glaring example of what is occurring in the wider economy,” Mishel writes.
AlterNet July 2, 2012 -
If we got rid of standardized tests to rate public schools, what would we have instead? The most likely alternative is the inspectorate used in England. Scholars like Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute say school visits by well-trained inspectors would reveal more about what needs fixing than test score averages.
The Washington Post July 2, 2012 -
If premiums go up, so does the cost to taxpayers of insuring each individual. That’s why overturning the mandate might not mean the law spends less money: Even though we’re insuring fewer people, each one is costing us much more. Moreover, the people we’re insuring are, on average, quite a bit sicker, as healthier folks are hanging back from the market. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that “the cost per newly insured person under health reform without the mandate is 93.3 percent higher than under health reform with the mandate.”
July 2, 2012 -
Manufacturers have added 495,000 jobs since January 2010, when factory employment bottomed at almost 6 million below the 2000 level, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of that 6 million, almost 40 percent were lost to other countries, either directly or because imports replaced domestic production, says Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek July 2, 2012 -
On average, CEOs made 231 times what workers made in 2011, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute cited by the Los Angeles Times. An average worker would have to work 3,489 years to make the salary of a top-paid CEO.
The Huffington Post July 2, 2012 -
Elise Gould, liberal think tank Economic Policy Institute
This mattered for people’s lives. The mandate provides a necessary safety net for millions of Americans who could not afford healthcare.
I don’t think people understand how it can affect them or their neighbours’ lives, how hard it is for people trying to get by these days. To have the government step in and bolster an important safety net is really important.
Healthcare cost is one of the leading factors behind bankruptcy. Making sure people have affordable healthcare is going to help families make ends meet.
BBC News July 2, 2012 -
The concept developed in the column is of “complentary” factors of production. Increasing the supply of dishwashers and busboys increases employment opportunities for chefs, waiters, kitchen equipment manufacturers, and so forth all up and down the skill spectrum.
The research that really changed my thinking on this is ably covered in this great Heidi Shierholz did for EPI back in February 2010. Note that EPI is the premiere labor-liberal think tank in Washington and hardly a hotbed of apologism for the top one percent. The basic point here is that the old CW on low-skill immigration is that it raised real wages for high-skill workers but lowered them for low-skill workers. The key methodological advance comes from realizing that a very large share of low-skill workers in the United States are themselves immigrants. Since restricting low-skill immigration for the sake of low-skill immigrants is a little perverse, it’s helpful to distinguish between the impact on immigrant workers and native-born workers.
Slate June 28, 2012 -
In 2011, young college grads earned an average of $16.81 per hour – about $35,000 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
National Journal June 28, 2012 -
In a CBO analysis of policy options for economic growth, payroll tax cuts ranked ahead of business tax cuts and infrastructure spending and behind aid to unemployed workers.
The payroll-tax cut puts money directly in the hands of consumers who are likely to spend it, said Ethan Pollack, a senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington group that favors ideas that benefit low- and middle- income workers.
“In the short run, we want additional consumer spending because that will create jobs and get the economy back on track,” said Pollack, who said he would prefer more aid to states and expanded unemployment insurance, both of which are more politically difficult. “If the question is, is it better to have the payroll-tax holiday or nothing, I would say it’s better to have it.”
Bloomberg BusinessWeek June 27, 2012 -
If Congress opts to pass the House Republican budget proposal as Romney urges, it would cost us 4.1 million jobs through 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Grover Norquist has got to be pinching himself. Maybe he can use a smaller bathtub for his drown-the-government party.
Politico June 27, 2012 -
Investment does more than facilitate people getting to jobs. It also creates new ones. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that increased investment in public transit in Los Angeles would bear economic benefits in multiple ways. In addition to expanding access for residents to find jobs (an area in which certain parts of the city already do well), the construction itself would put a lot of people to work.
Grist June 27, 2012 -
Several organizations have attempted to quantify what a family requires to meet basic needs. The Economic Policy Institute has created Basic Family Budgets for more than 600 localities across the country.
The American Prospect June 26, 2012 -
The most valid comparison would be to consider New Jersey’s 17,600 jobs as a share of the job gains across the country in May, according to Doug Hall, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network at the Washington, DC-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.
Politifact June 25, 2012 -
The numbers show that as bad as the unemployment rate is for college graduates—around 19.1 percent—the jobless rate for high school graduates is near 54 percent.
And the skills gap could get worse. Nearly 17 percent of high school graduates had no job or were not enrolled in college in 2011, up from 13.7 in 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC June 25, 2012 -
The policy’s economic impact will probably be limited because the immigrants affected form a small part of the total workforce, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. It won’t produce big changes in growth or the unemployment rate, and concerns by policy critics that U.S. citizens will be displaced probably are unfounded, other labor-market analysts say.
The potential effect on those eligible is another story.
“By far the biggest impact will be on these individuals themselves,” Shierholz said. “They had very limited work opportunities but now they’ll be able to be fully integrated into the labor force.”
Bloomberg BusinessWeek June 22, 2012 -
Trade with China has destroyed every 55th job in America, nearly 2.8 million positions, analysis of government data by Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute shows. That equals wiping out every job in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area. Nearly two million of those jobs were in manufacturing, Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. International Trade Commission data show.
Reuters June 21, 2012 -
No surprise then that wages are down, and mobility along with it:
adjusted for inflation, the median hourly wage was lower in 2011 than it was a decade earlier, according to data from a forthcoming book by the Economic Policy Institute, “The State of Working America, 12th Edition.” Good benefits are harder to come by, and people are staying longer in jobs that they want to leave, afraid that they will not be able to find something better. Only 2.1 million people quit their jobs in March, down from the 2.9 million people who quit in December 2007, the first month of the recession.
The Atlantic June 21, 2012 -
Data released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that younger families age 35-44 were the hardest hit by the collapse of the housing bubble. While American families on average experienced a 39% drop in net worth between 2007 and 2010, younger families saw a 54% drop in the same time period. The EPI, a liberal-leaning think tank based in Washington, expressed particular concern in the drop because most families start saving for retirement at this age and because younger families will have to save more than previous generations due to expected declines in pensions and Social Security benefits. Further, the economy grew on a per-capita inflation-adjusted basis each year between 1989 and 2010, while net worth for younger age groups fell over the same time period.
MarketWatch June 21, 2012 -
With the number of unemployed outpacing available jobs, the report somewhat weakens the argument that much of the unemployment problem afflicting the economy is the result of a skills mismatch.
“Unemployed workers far outnumber job openings in every sector,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
“This underscores that by far the main cause of today’s persistent high unemployment is a broad-based lack of demand for workers and not, as is often claimed, available workers lacking the skills needed for the sectors with job openings.”
Reuters June 20, 2012 -
“This is the kind of training that makes a difference,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president at the Economic Policy Institute and an expert on workforce economics. Most federal dollars for job training are spent on job-placement programs or short-term training that only qualifies students for low-wage jobs. “They might get résumé-writing advice, how-to-interview assistance, that kind of thing,” Eisenbrey says.
American Prospect June 20, 2012