The most recent event for the Agenda, More Jobs, Good Jobs, was held on Friday, June 22. The keynote speaker was Congressman Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who spoke on full employment and the Federal Reserve Board. The economist Tom Palley delivered a paper on reviving full employment policy. Jeff Madrick, the editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union, and director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, The New School, spoke about his EPI report on public investment and a high-wage economic growth model. Audio and video from this event are now available.

EPI on the Hill
Two of the presenters at EPI’s March Agenda for Shared Prosperity event on immigration testified before the House Education and Labor Committee on June 7. Former Secretary of Labor and EPI board member Ray Marshall testified about the dangers of guest worker programs and the need for comprehensive reform (read the report). Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center testified that the current guest worker programs are rife with abuse and should be abolished or reformed.

The Wal-Mart effect
The world’s largest retailer contributed about $27 billion to the United States’ trade deficit with China in 2006. How many U.S. jobs got displaced as a result of Wal-Mart importing all of these Chinese goods? In a new Issue Brief, Robert Scott shows how Wal-Mart’s imports from China have displaced nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2006.

Marketing the gains from trade
As new trade agreements are considered before fast-track trade promotion authority expires at the end of the month, a range of claims are being made to Congress about the benefits of trade. But one claim touts trade benefits far higher than the rest and deserves close inspection. In an EPI Issue Brief, EPI economist Josh Bivens researches the source of the claim and finds the numbers are far too weak to be a basis of discussions about trade policy.

• On June 29, after the defeat in the Senate of legislation that would overhaul the nation’s immigration policy, TomPaine.com posted an op-ed by EPI’s Jared Bernstein and Ross Eisenbrey on what needs to happen to enact real reform. The authors proposed a two-pronged solution involving employee identification and earned amnesty.

• EPI President Lawrence Mishel and board members Richard Trumka and Julianne Malveaux comprised the panel on economic policy, “The Economic Firestorm and the Agenda for Shared Prosperity,” at the June 2007 Take Back America Conference held in Washington, D.C. EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey led a panel on public investment at the conference.

• In an op-ed on HuffingtonPost.com on June 22, the authors of  Talking Past Each Other, Lawrence Mishel, David Kusnet, and Ruy Teixeira responded to Steven Rose’s critique of their book and sought to clarify how the American people feel and talk about the economy. The authors defended their accurate research on the reservations they have about the nation’s economic and job security, a topic many in the media are finally covering.

• EPI’s Tony Avirgan was interviewed by Brazil’s largest television station, Globo TV, on why Brazilians are wrong to think they will get rich exporting ethanol to the United States.

Agenda for Shared Prosperity event
The next Agenda for Shared Prosperity Event will take place in September. Date and details to be announced soon.

The State of Working America 2006/2007
The Economic Policy Institute and Cornell University Press have released the final edition of The State of Working America 2006/2007.

Prepared biennially since 1988, EPI’s flagship publication sums up the problems and challenges facing American working families, presenting a wide variety of data on family incomes, taxes, wages, unemployment, wealth, and poverty—data that enables the book’s authors to closely examine the impact of the economy on the living standards of the American people. The State of Working America 2006/2007 is an exhaustive reference work that will be welcomed by anyone eager for a comprehensive portrait of the economic well-being of the nation. Order your copy now!

For the first time, all of the tables and figures from this edition are available for download in high-quality formats suitable for use in PowerPoint presentations, reports, newsletters, or blogs. Go to StateofWorkingAmerica.org for this and other great material such as select chapters and topic-specific fact sheets.