State of Working America 2004/2005

From Publishers Weekly
In their biennial report, the Economic Policy Institute is sparing in its comments about specific leaders in government and their impact on employment. Instead, the think tank focuses on the long-term business cycle, which takes shape under the influence of successive administrations. Few lay readers are likely to wade through the book’s multitude of graphs and charts, but the data found here will undoubtedly inform reports in the media, academic studies and policy development at the highest levels. Examining the five dimensions of the national economic situation (family income, wages, jobs, wealth and poverty), the authors analyze trends in the nation’s levels of inequality and unemployment and make acute regional and international comparisons. What they find is not pretty: they conclude that income inequality in America is now much higher than in other periods, and that the economic mobility of the American dream is largely just that, a dream. One political point they do make is an important one for a book that examines economic history "from the perspective of working families": the "recent regressive tax cuts," they say, have worsened this inequality. Overall, the authors join the chorus that sings the praises of the 1990’s boom while lamenting the current weak recovery, and they provide ample statistical evidence to support their assertions and give journalists, professors and lobbyists plenty of ammunition.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


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Like Sam Roberts's Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the 21st Century, this work by Economic Policy Institute president Mishel and institute members Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto takes recent U.S. census information as the starting point for discussing the state of working America. In addition, both books have appeared in well-received earlier versions (Roberts's in 1993 and this one biennially since 1988). The books are, however, significantly different: as its title implies, Who We Are Now is a fairly broad look at current American demographics, while The State of Working America is a focused, richly detailed examination of what the numbers tell us about the American workplace today. And what the numbers tell us is sorry indeed: "The United States has been tracking employment statistics since 1939, and never in history has it taken this long to regain the jobs lost over a downturn." Chapter titles reflect the trends behind America's prolonged state of joblessness ("Family Income," for example, is subtitled "Higher Inequality Leads to Uneven Progress," while "Wages" describes how the country is "battered by labor slack"). Bottom Line 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. This well-written, soundly argued, and important reference book belongs in all libraries.-Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.


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