Economic Policy Institute Publishes State of Working America

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Economic Policy Institute today published The State of Working America, a website that provides academics, policymakers, the media and the public with comprehensive data on the economic condition of working Americans. The State of Working America presents data in eight broad issue areas: jobs, wages, income, mobility, wealth, poverty, health and international comparisons. It also allows users to view data by the demographic factors of race and ethnicity, gender, age, education level, family type, immigration status and union membership. The website's address is www.stateofworkingamerica.org.

Key State of Working America findings include:

• The Great Recession saw job loss twice as severe as the three recessions prior to it.
• This job loss, combined with growth in the working-age population, means that roughly 11 million jobs need to be created to return the unemployment rate to pre-recession levels.
• There has been a "lost decade" for typical American households, as median income has declined.
• The top 1% of Americans have benefited disproportionately from economic growth over most of the past 30 years.
• Poverty no longer falls when the economy grows—the two have become de-linked in the past three decades.

The State of Working America website includes a "Featured Stories" section, which highlights three key economic stories of the past 30 years. "The Great Recession" enables readers to understand the Great Recession that started in December 2007 and from which the U.S. economy has yet to recover. "Economic Landscape" and "Inequality" describe how government policy and other factors have affected the economy as it is experienced by workers and how economic inequality has risen over the last 30 years. An interactive feature, "When income grows, who gains?" allows users to track the relationship between the growth of incomes and inequality over any time period between 1917 and 2008.

Unlike past editions, The State of Working America will be published exclusively online this year, rather than in book form. All of the data on the website can be downloaded in its raw form, and it will be updated periodically.

EPI is also publishing a series of papers and a book under The State of Working America brand. The book, Failure by Design, by EPI researcher Josh Bivens, explains how policy decisions made over the last four decades have resulted in today's broken economy.

CONTACT:

Phoebe Silag, 202-331-5546 or Karen Conner, 201-331-5542

SOURCE Economic Policy Institute