Media clips
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But some of it is just an economy that remains weak. On Wednesday, at an event at the Economic Policy Institute, Paul Krugman explained why, in his new book, he calls the current moment “a depression. ” “A recession,” Krugman said, “is when the economy is going down. A depression is when it stays down for a long period of time. Remember that the Great Depression included two separate recessions and recoveries.”
The Washington Post May 7, 2012 -
That imbalance hinders the U.S. economic recovery by stifling job creation. Between 2001 — when the People’s Republic entered the World Trade Organization — and 2011, America’s trade deficit with China has cost the U.S. 2.8 million jobs, the Economic Policy Institute concluded in a recent report. That includes nearly 2 million manufacturing jobs eliminated or displaced over that period, according to the Washington think tank.
CBS News May 7, 2012 -
Other research backs up that disparity. Algernon Austin, director of the race, ethnicity and the economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, last year analyzed 2009 data on teens who were not attending school.
He found that 16- to 19- year-olds from poor families, whose income was below the poverty line, were less likely to be working than teens whose families had more money. That was true regardless of race or ethnicity.
“In terms of need, it is backwards,” he said.
MSNBC May 7, 2012 -
The top CEO compensation adds to this picture. Lawrence Mishel and Natalie Sabadish at the Economic Policy Institute show us in detail what’s happened:
Though lower than in other years in the last decade, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio in 2011 of more than 200-to-1 is far above the ratios prevailing in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and mid-1990s. This illustrates that CEOs have fared far better than the typical worker, the stock market, or the U.S. economy over the last several decades. That begs the question: is there any gauge against which to measure CEO pay that hasn’t been surpassed?
Daily Kos May 7, 2012 -
Income inequality has vexed many economists, especially with the growing disparity in wages. Chief executives of the biggest public companies now make 231 times more than typical workers, according to a study released Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“CEOs have fared far better than the typical worker, the stock market and the U.S. economy as a whole since the late-1970s,” said Lawrence Mishel, the institute’s president, in the report. “Compensation growth for executives and for top-tier financial-sector workers has fueled the enormous growth of incomes at the top.”
MSNBC May 3, 2012 -
“There is not enough demand,” Krugman said during an appearance at the Economic Policy Institute, where he gave a talk to promote his new book, End This Depression Now. “We focused a lot – too much – on the financial sector’s problems. Yet that is long since gone and we still don’t have a steady recovery. That tells us the crisis was far more about household debt.”
Fiscal Times May 3, 2012 -
The average U.S. chief executive earned more than $11 million last year in salary, stock options and other compensation, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. That’s about 231 times more, on average, than workers.
That ratio has shrunk a bit since the height of the dot.com bubble, when a ballooning stock market inflated CEO compensation to 411 times that of working stiffs.
Los Angeles Times May 3, 2012 -
By now the whole wonky set is familiar with the stylized fact that for thirty years after World War II, productivity gains fed into higher earnings for the media worker. In the past thirty years, that hasn’t been the case. But people rarely dive deep into the question of where the “missing” gains went. A great report that Larry Mishel wrote for the Economic Policy Institute last week does the work and the answer is pretty interesting. Rather than a single cause, there are three separate sources of divergence. One is structural shift in which labor claims a smaller share of national economic output and capital claims a larger share. A second is a shift within the labor share toward greater inequality such that the mean wage rises faster than the median wage. And a third is a very interesting phenomenon that has to do with the existence of different inflation indexes.
Slate May 2, 2012 -
The New York Times May 2, 2012
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The 99 percent are extremely productive workers, but aren’t compensated for their productivity. While productivity has been on the rise among workers, average wage and compensation has remained nearly flat. That means while workers are producing more, they’re being compensated the same. This chart from the Economic Policy Institute details the change:
Think Progress May 2, 2012 -
One in four U.S. workers — or nearly 40 million people — earn a salary below the federal poverty line of $23,000 for a family of four.* Who are they, where are they, and how does their education differ from the rest of the country? A wonderful new paper from the Economic Policy Institute explains it all.The Atlantic May 1, 2012
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Josh Bivens says that the United Kingdom’s double-dip recession is proof austerity doesn’t work.
The New York Times May 1, 2012 -
Larry Mishel has a systematic breakdown of the reasons for worker income stagnation since 1973. He starts with the familiar divergence: productivity up 80 percent, the compensation (including benefits) of the median worker up only 11 percent. Where did the productivity go?
The answer is, it’s two-thirds the inequality, stupid. One third of the difference is due to a technical issue involving price indexes. The rest, however, reflects a shift of income from labor to capital and, within that, a shift of labor income to the top and away from the middle.
The New York Times April 30, 2012 -
“The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay between CEOs of the S&P 500 Index companies and U.S. workers widened to 380 times in 2011 from 343 times in 2010,” the site notes. “Back in 1980, the average large company CEO only received 42 times the average worker’s pay.” In 2005, the average U.S. CEO made 262 times as much as the average worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Protesters with the “99 Percent” movement this week disrupted the shareholder meeting of another U.S corporate giant, General Electric, with chants of “pay your fair share.” That meeting was held at the Renaissance Center in Detroit – the same building that’s home to GM’s headquarters. Akerson should understand that it might not take much for him and his company to get similar treatment.
The Fiscal Times April 30, 2012 -
The drop from January to March was largely thanks to a slump in government spending. That alone shaved 0.6 points of GDP.
“The U.S. economy is clearly expanding, but just as clearly it’s expanding at a rate that is too slow to put reliable, significant downward pressure on joblessness,” said Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute.
Industry Week April 30, 2012 -
Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said things are “expanding at a rate that is too slow to put reliable, significant downward pressure on joblessness.”
And Bivens predicted that growth will likely continue to decelerate as the government spending is trimmed.
“The surest way to boost near-term growth to pull down the unemployment rate remains further fiscal support,” Bivens said. “The fact that most of the policy debate is instead focused on just how fast this support will be ramped down in coming quarters is a sign of how detached this debate has become from economic reality.”
Politico April 30, 2012 -
In 1994, economists Lawrence Mishel and Jared Bernstein were first to point out the gap that was already opening up between pay (low) and productivity (high). Bernstein later served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist and is now a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute.
Now, Mishel has done the most careful study to date of what accounts for the productivity/pay gap. He wrote a blog post called “Understanding the wedge between productivity and median compensation growth” on April 26. He also has a longer article on the EPI website. And if that’s not enough, there’s a technical article by Mishel and Kar-Fai Gee of Canada’s Center for the Study of Living Standards published in that center’s International Productivity Monitor (PDF).
Bloomberg BusinessWeek April 27, 2012 -
Heidi Shierholz, labor market expert with the Economic Policy Institute, said the increase might also be influenced by “artificially low” jobless claims in January and February, as the unseasonably warm weather gave the job market a temporary boost.
As a result, Shierholz said it would be most accurate to characterize the job market as being in a “rocky recovery.”
“This sheds even more doubt on whether we’ve entered a robust, self-sustaining job recovery,” she said.
CNNMoney April 27, 2012 -
Fact No 1: Is “regulatory uncertainty” destroying jobs? On this point, Wszolek might read the Economic Policy Institute’s study, “Regulatory Uncertainty: A Phony Explanation for our jobs problem.” EPI director Larry Mishel concludes, “An examination of current economic trends, and especially what employers are doing in terms of hiring and investment, debunks this story about regulatory uncertainty as the cause of our dismal job growth.” With regard to the NLRB rules, GOP lawsuits and legislation are responsible for creating the current uncertainty.
The Hill April 24, 2012 -
So Romney’s plan would lavish tax breaks on the richest Americans and increase already sky-high defense spending, while gutting some of the core functions of government: public safety, education, and infrastructure. As the Economic Policy Institute noted, the current level of domestic discretionary spending — which is comprised of the programs listed above, among many others — “is 4 percent of GDP, about equal to the historical average since the early 1960s.” Last week, Romeney orchestrated an event with some “real Americans,” who told him it might be necessary to raise their taxes, rather than cut priorities like education.
Think Progress April 24, 2012 -
But are we really becoming another Greece or Spain, a wasteland of opportunity for anybody under the age of 25? Not quite. What the new statistics really tell us about is the changing nature, and value, of higher education.
First, here’s the nut of the AP’s findings, which it derived with the help of researchers from Northeastern University, Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, based on data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the U.S. Department of Labor
The Atlantic April 24, 2012 -
The disappearance of mid-level jobs during the Great Recession, along with overall high unemployment, have made it hard for recent college graduates to find good jobs upon leaving school. More than 50 percent of college graduates under age 25 are either jobless or underemployed, according to an analysis from Drexel University and the Economic Policy Institute
Think Progress April 24, 2012 -
Far from being job killers, these regulations will mean new work for the innovative American companies who supply the equipment needed for plants to comply with the law. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that enactment of these standards would create a net gain of 117,000 jobs.
Concord Monitor April 23, 2012 -
The figures are based on an analysis of 2011 Current Population Survey data by Northeastern University researchers and supplemented with material from Paul Harrington, an economist at Drexel University, and the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. They rely on Labor Department assessments of the level of education required to do the job in 900-plus U.S. occupations, which were used to calculate the shares of young adults with bachelor’s degrees who were “underemployed.”
About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.
Associated Press April 23, 2012 -
And though D.C.’s jobless rate remained stagnant, it is down from from 10 percent in March 2011. Unemployment in the District hovered in the double digits for over two years beginning in August 2009 before finally dipping to 9.9 percent in January. In the past 12 months, D.C. has added 13,100 jobs for a total of 738,600, according to the BLS.
Even though the needle moved very little in the past month, there are still some silver linings to be found, said Doug Hall, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute.
“The fact that the employment rate is below 10 percent is a pretty good thing,” Hall said. “At the same time, an unemployment rate that’s more or less 10 percent is certainly not something to be celebrating. It’s obvious more needs to be done to turn the corner in what’s been a pretty weak recovery.”
Hall said much of the onus on keeping economic fires alive lies with the federal government funding infrastructure projects that can lead to long-term job creation. He cited a recent analysis by his organization of the budget proposal favored by House Republicans that would make significant cuts to domestic discretionary spending.
“The role of the federal government is clear here,” Hall said. “At the same time, state and local governments need to make sure they are not compromising their future based on the faulty premise of avoiding deficits down the road.”
DCist April 23, 2012 -
“All downturns disproportionately impact young people and this one is no different,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “Everyone’s situation deteriorates in a downturn. No one escaped and young people got hurt the most.”
ABC News April 20, 2012 -
The Economic Policy Institute determined that the rules would yield a net increase of 84,500 direct jobs by 2015.
Think Progress April 20, 2012 -
Many groups, including the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), are speaking out against Apple claiming it should take full responsibility.
“Apple is certainly to blame because Apple is in control of the situation,” Ross Eisenbrey, the Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute, said to WebProNews.
The EPI, along with Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), the Workers Rights Consortium, and others, recently held a forum to raise awareness of these issues. Their research, as Eisenbrey explained to us, found that Foxconn’s Chinese factory employees work 60-70 hours per week, are exposed to dangerous chemicals, experience explosions from uncontrolled aluminum dust, and are under a military-style of management.
WebProNews April 20, 2012 -
Although Furman advocates a higher minimum wage (as Wal-Mart does), he argues that even modestly higher Wal-Mart worker wages would eliminate the company’s profits or push up prices, thus implicitly hurting them.
But an Economic Policy Institute team of economists authoritatively criticized Global Insight’s methodology and judged its projected savings from shopping at Wal-Mart “implausible.” For example, EPI critics say, the Global Insight report credited Wal-Mart with reducing prices it does not affect, like other services that make up 60 percent of the consumer price index. In any case, the EPI economists argued, if the savings are as big as claimed, Wal-Mart could raise wages and keep prices low.
The American Prospect April 20, 2012 -
And the Ryan plan is wounding. It would end the Medicare guarantee, voucherize the program, explode costs for seniors, and subject them to the callous mercies of the insurance industry. The plan would destroy 1.3 million jobs in 2013 and 2.8 million in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And Ryan would gut areas like college aid to shower the wealthy with more tax cuts.
The Week April 20, 2012