Not only would a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile mean that T-Mobile’s more than 20,000 workers have the chance to choose a union without interference, but it would open the door for a high-speed broadband build-out to 97 percent of the population, helping close the digital divide.

If China increased the value of its currency to its real level, the resulting growth in the United States could create 2.25 million new U.S. jobs, according to a new report.      

The Benefits of Revaluation, released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), explains that if the value of the Chinese currency, the yuan, and satellite currencies, such as those in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, were increased by 25 percent to 30 percent against the dollar, the U.S. gross domestic product would grow as much as $285.7 billion, creating up to 2.25 million U.S. jobs. Creating that many jobs would reduce the U.S. unemployment rate by at least one full percentage point.

A handful of states this year have introduced bills to raise their minimum wage. That’s generated the usual cries from business groups and the regular gang of lawmakers who fight darn near every piece of pro-worker legislation that comes along. 

Today is the 10-year  anniversary of President Bush’s tax cuts that went mostly to very rich individuals and big corporations. According to the rosy economic scenario Bush and the Republicans painted, the nation today should be figuring out to what to do with a $5.6 trillion budget surplus and just how to fill the tens of millions of new jobs that were supposed to generate new wealth for all of us.

It goes like this—“We’re going broke we can’t afford it.” It’s almost a mantra from the crowd of lawmakers and policy “experts” who are loudly and continually claiming the nation must make drastic cuts in family-help government programs; cut wages, pension and health care for public-sector workers and who also suggest working families should be satisfied with three decades of stagnant wages.

More than 156 million Americans get their health care coverage through their employers. Employer and most worker contributions to health insurance premiums are excluded from workers’ taxable incomes.

To date, 682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994, a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study finds. The main reason for the job loss is a $97.2 billion trade deficit with Mexico. In 1993, one year before NAFTA was implemented, the United States had a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico that supported nearly 30,000 U.S.  jobs.  

Students graduating from college this spring will face the worst job market for graduates since the Great Depression, a new report says. “The Class of 2011: Young Workers Face a Dire Labor Market Without a Safety Net,” by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), found that unemployment among workers between the ages of 16 and 24 is more than double the national average. In 2010, young workers averaged 18.4 percent unemployment, compared with 9.6 percent overall.

Congress is back in town next week and the budget battle will take top billing. Republicans are standing solidly behind their Paul Ryan-crafted House plan that forces seniors to pay more for health care by replacing Medicare with underfunded vouchers, cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding, repeals health care reform and slashes up to 2 million jobs.

Workers at the top of the wage scale are more than four times more likely to have paid sick days than workers toiling near the bottom wage scale, says a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Economic Snapshot.