The State of Working America
520
The State of Working America
520eBookTwelfth Edition (Twelfth Edition)
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Overview
From reviews of previous editions—
"The State of Working America remains unrivaled as the most-trusted source for a comprehensive understanding of how working Americans and their families are faring in today's economy."—Robert B. Reich
"It is the inequality of wealth, argue the authors, rather than new technology (as some would have it), that is responsible for the failure of America's workplace to keep pace with the country's economic growth. The State of Working America is a well-written, soundly argued, and important reference book."—Library Journal
"An indispensable work on family income, wages, taxes, employment, and the distribution of wealth."—New York Review of Books
Since 1988, The State of Working America has provided a comprehensive answer to a question newly in vogue in this age of Occupy Wall Street: To what extent has overall economic growth translated into rising living standards for the vast majority of American workers and their families? In the 12th edition, Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould, and Heidi Shierholz analyze a trove of data on income, jobs, mobility, poverty, wages, and wealth to demonstrate that rising economic inequality over the past three decades has decoupled overall economic growth from growth in the living standards of the vast majority.
The new edition of The State of Working America also expands on this analysis of American living standards, most notably by placing the Great Recession in historical context. The severe economic downturn that began in December 2007 came on the heels of a historically weak recovery following the 2001 recession, a recovery that saw many measures of living standards stagnate. The authors view the past decade as "lost" in terms of living standards growth, and warn that millions of American households face another decade of lost opportunity.
Especially troubling, the authors stress, is that while overall economic performance in the decades before the Great Recession was more than sufficient to broadly raise living standards, broad-based growth was blocked by rising inequality driven largely by policy choices. A determinedly data-driven narrative, The State of Working America remains the most comprehensive resource about the economic experience of working Americans.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780801466229 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2012 |
| Series: | Economic Policy Institute |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 520 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Lawrence Mishel is the president of the Economic Policy Institute and its research director from 1987 to 1999. He is the coauthor of every edition of The State of Working America. Josh Bivens has been an economist at the Economic Policy Institute since 2002. He is the author most recently of Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy, also from Cornell. Elise Gould is Director of Health Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute. Heidi Shierholz is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and coauthor of The State of Working America, 2008/2009.
Table of Contents
Documentation and methodology 1
Chapter 1 Overview: Policy-driven inequality blocks living-standards growth for low- and middle-income Americans 5
America's vast middle class has suffered a 'lost decade' and faces the threat of another 5
Income and wage inequality have risen sharply over the last three-and-a-half decades 6
Rising inequality is the major cause of wage stagnation for workers and of the failure of low-and middle-income families to appropriately benefit from growth 6
Economic policies caused increased inequality of wages and incomes 7
Claims that growing inequality has not hurt middle-income families are flawed 8
Growing income inequality has not been offset by increased mobility 9
Inequalities persist by race and gender 9
Economic history and policy as seen from below the top rungs of the wage and income ladder 10
The Great Recession: Causes and consequences 11
A very condensed macroeconomic history of the Great Recession and its aftermath 12
Economic 'lost decades': Weak growth for most American's wages and incomes before and likely after the Great Recession 15
Weak labor demand at the heart of the lost decade 16
Weak labor demand devastates key living standards 18
Dim growth prospects forecast another lost decade 20
Two key lessons from the lost decade 22
Extraordinarily unequal growth before the lost decade: Rising inequality blocks income and wage growth from 1979 to 2007 23
Income inequality and stagnating living standards 23
Wage inequality and the break between wages and productivity 28
Strong income and wage growth in the atypical last half of the 1990s 31
Economic mobility has neither caused nor cured the damage done by rising inequality 33
Today's private economy: Not performing for middle-income Americans 35
Middle-income growth lags average income growth and historical income growth rates 35
Social insurance programs, not private sources, account for the majority of middle-fifth income growth 36
Growing shares of income are dedicated to holding families harmless against rising medical costs 36
Households have to work more to achieve income gains 37
Assessing what the private economy is really delivering to middle-income Americans 38
Today's economy: Different outcomes by race and gender 39
Many more than just two Americas 39
Male and female America 41
No one 'American economy' 43
Conclusion: The struggling state of working America is policy-driven 43
The policy good for everybody in the fractured U.S. economy: Ensuring rapid recovery to full employment 46
Table and figure notes 48
Chapter 2 Income: Already a 'lost decade' 53
The basic contours of American incomes 57
Family and household money income 58
Median family income as a metric of economic performance 65
A look at income by income fifths 67
Median family income by race, ethnicity, and nativity 68
The Great Recession and American incomes 71
Impact by income group 71
Impact by race and ethnicity 74
Income losses projected for years to come 74
Rising inequality of American incomes 76
Family income inequality 76
Unequal growth of comprehensive household incomes suggests diverging well-being 79
Sharp rise in income inequality apparent in every major data source 80
The limited impact of taxes and transfers relative to market income 84
Factors behind the large rise in inequality of market incomes 94
How much did middle-income living standards actually rise between 1979 and 2007? 106
Measuring living standards at the middle 107
Sources of income for the middle fifth 109
Income growth for the middle fifth has been driven largely by elderly households' pension and transfer income 112
Adjusting income for the truer contribution of health care transfers 112
Disproportionate growth of transfers directed toward elderly households 114
The role of hours worked and educational upgrading in wage growth 120
Little of the growth of middle incomes can be attributed to a well-functioning economy 127
Conclusion 128
Table and figure notes 130
Chapter 3 Mobility: not offsetting growing inequality 139
Intragenerational mobility 142
Lifetime mobility against the backdrop of generational stagnation 142
Family and individual mobility trends 143
Factors associated with intragenerational mobility 147
Intergenerational mobility 150
Cross-country comparisons 151
The impact of race, wealth, and education on mobility 154
Race 155
Wealth 156
Education 157
Income inequality and mobility 161
Has the American Dream become more or less attainable over time? 163
Conclusion 168
Figure notes 169
Chapter 4 Wages: The top, and very top, outpace the rest 173
Describing wage trends 177
The decade of lost wage growth 177
Contrasting work hours and hourly wage growth 179
Contrasting compensation and wage growth 180
Wages of production and nonsupervisory workers 183
Wage trends by wage level 185
Shifts in low-wage jobs 192
Trends among very high earners fuel growing wage inequality 194
Trends in benefit growth and inequality 198
Dimensions of wage inequality 206
Gaps between higher- and lower-wage workers 208
Gaps between workers with different education and experience levels 211
The gap between workers with comparable education and experience 213
Rising education/wage differentials 214
Young workers' wages 222
The growth of within-group wage inequality 228
Wage inequality by race/ethnicity and gender 232
Productivity and the compensation/productivity gap 235
Factors driving wage inequality 241
Unemployment 242
The shift to low-paying industries 247
Employer health care costs 248
Trade and wages 253
Immigration 265
Unionization 268
The decline in the real value of the minimum wage 279
Executive and finance-sector pay 286
Explaining wage inequality: Bringing the factors together 292
Technology and skill mismatches 294
What is the appeal of the technology story? 295
Education gaps and wage inequality 296
The slowdown in the growth of demand for college graduates 299
Within-group wage inequality 301
The labor market difficulties of college graduates 302
Jobs of the future 305
Conclusion 309
Table and figure notes 310
Chapter 5 Jobs: A function of demand 321
Job creation is a macroeconomic outcome 323
Zero is not the baseline for job growth 325
What are today's jobs like? 327
Industries 327
Firm size 329
Occupations 330
Job quality 333
Unemployment 334
Unemployment and age 336
Unemployment and race/ethnicity, gender, and education 339
Unemployment rates of foreign- and native-born workers 342
Unemployment insurance benefits 343
Labor force participation: Structural and cyclical changes 345
Beyond the unemployment rate: Other measures of labor market slack 348
Employment-to-population ratio 349
Underemployment 350
Long-term unemployment 351
Over-the-year unemployment 354
Job-seekers ratio 355
Voluntary quits 356
Recovering from the Great Recession 357
Comparing the Great Recession and its aftermath with earlier recessions and recoveries 358
Job loss and gender in the Great Recession 360
Unemployment in the aftermath of the Great Recession: Structural or cyclical? 363
The consequences of job loss and unemployment for workers and their families 367
Conclusion 370
Table and figure notes 371
Chapter 6 Wealth: Unrelenting disparities 375
Net worth 377
The racial divide in net worth 385
Assets 386
Stocks 391
Housing 393
Retirement insecurity 398
Liabilities 400
Student loan debt 403
Debt relative to disposable personal income 404
Debt service 404
Hardship 408
Bankruptcy 409
Wealth of U.S. citizens compared with citizens' wealth in peer countries 411
Conclusion 413
Table and figure notes 414
Chapter 7 Poverty: The Great Recession adds injury to insult 419
Poverty measurement 421
Official poverty line 421
Supplemental Poverty Measure 428
Relative poverty 431
The working poor 432
Poverty-level wages 432
Job quality 434
Work hours 435
Determinants of low incomes 437
The macro economy and poverty 437
The impact of economic, demographic, and education changes on poverty rates 440
Resources for low-income Americans 444
International comparisons 447
Poverty and the earnings distribution 448
Resource allocation 452
Conclusion 454
Table and figure notes 455
Appendix A CPS income measurement 461
Appendix B Wage measurement 465
Bibliography 475
Index 489
About EPI 504
About the authors 505