A new study finds that when states raised the minimum wage in recent recessions, their economies suffered less job loss than those that did not (click on chart at left to expand).

How would you like a 100 percent boost in wages?

If you’re in the top 1/1000th of the U.S. income earners, you already got one. Since 1980, a household making $1.5 million in 2010 has received a pay increase of more than 100 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to New York Times reporter David Leonhardt (click on chart at left to expand).

Leonhardt points to inequality and a long-term slowdown in the economy as behind the nation’s current woes. This economic slowdown began after the 2001 recession, which never had a strong recovery.

Washington Post’s Ezra Klein pointed out yesterday that the difference between Mitt Romney and President Obama’s tax plans is pretty stark.

Klein writes:

Romney’s plan is a large tax cut for the top 60 percent, a huge tax cut for the top few percent, and a significant tax increase for the bottom few percent, as he permits a few temporary tax breaks that benefit low-income folks to expire. Obama’s plan keeps the current tax rates for almost everyone but the top few percent, who face a very large tax increase.

Young worker households—those between ages 35 and 44 and age 35 and younger—saw the steepest drop in their net worth between 2007 and 2010, according to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis of last week's Federal Reserve report.

It’s not technically hard to put millions of unemployed workers back on the job—the real challenge is political, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Even returning the public-sector jobs that have been slashed at the state and local levels could lower the unemployment rate to nearly 7 percent or under, he said.

Krugman spoke this week at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and on a variety of media outlets around the nation to promote his new book, End This Depression Now! In short, says Krugman:

This is a crosspost by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.

The nation’s so-called economic recovery hasn’t been one for either job growth or income, according to two new reports out today.

The median net worth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times greater than that of Latino households, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center, which attributes the increase to the decline in the housing market and the ensuing recession. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66 percent among Latino households and 53 percent among black households, compared with just 16 percent among white households.

The nation gained a stunningly small number of jobs in June–18,000–while the U.S. unemployment rate rose from 9.1 percent in May to 9.2 percent last month, according to Department of Labor data released this morning. Analysts had predicted jobs would grow by 100,000 in June. This is the third consecutive month the unemployment rate has worsened and the worst unemployment rate of the year. Hiring by companies, which excludes government agencies, was the weakest since May 2010.

America is slowly recovering from the Great Recession and long-term economic growth depends on how well we integrate the poor and people of color into the mainstream economy, according to a brand new report.