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 .

The closer we examine the House Republican budget plan for 2012 put together by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the worse it looks. Two new analyses show not only would Ryan’s plan to cut Medicaid cost 2 million mostly private-sector jobs, but—and this is scary—if the nation followed Ryan’s budget road map, the federal government would nearly vanish by 2050.

The Republican budget plan unveiled yesterday privatizes Medicare, cuts corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding and repeals health care reform. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Just as Republican governors and state legislators are assaulting the rights of working Americans under the guise of budget crises…Republican leaders in Congress are using the federal budget to further their own political agendas. Their credo is that tax giveaways to the super rich and Wall Street should be paid for on the backs of working people.

When lawmakers—usually with the backing of corporations and right-wing, anti-worker groups—push for so-called right to work laws, they claim it will bring business and jobs to their states. Nothing could be further from the truth, says economist Gordon Lafer.

The Recovery Act’s green investments committed through the end of 2010 created or saved nearly 1 million jobs, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) and the BlueGreen Alliance . This report provides evidence that the Recovery Act succeeded in responding to the nation’s economic crisis and that green investments create jobs while laying a foundation for the development of a 21st century green economy in the United States.

A new analysis shows workers in states with laws like those proposed in Ohio and Missouri, which supporters misleadingly call “right to work,” have lower wages, whether they belong to a union or not.