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Union Membership: How US Labor Changed From 1985 to 2025
The overall share of US workers who were union members hovered at 10 percent in 2025, just shy of the prior year’s historic low. However, the national figures obscure large subnational geographic variation. Since 1985, unions have maintained ground in a handful of US states while struggling in others. All Sectors Over the four decades between 1985 and 2025, the national union membership rate fell by 8 percentage points, to just over half of its 1985 level of 18 percent.
Trump Accounts and the Math Behind the 10% Stock Return Myth
We all know how Trump likes to make up crazy numbers, which his lackeys then repeat. He has $18 trillion in foreign investment coming into the country. He won the 2020 election by millions of votes. He is lowering drug prices by 1,500 percent. We can usually just laugh these off as the ramblings of an old man suffering from dementia. But there is one crazy Trump number that it is important people know should not be taken seriously.
(Foreign Policy) Why Trump Should Be Careful What He Wishes for in Cuba
Foreign Policy Read article on original site. In a new piece in Foreign Policy, Guillaume Long and Alexander Main warn that the Trump administration’s escalating pressure campaign against Cuba could produce a crisis that could prove harmful to both the Cuban people and US interests.
Kristi Noem is Out, But Who is Markwayne Mullin?
After facing criticism from both sides of the aisle over her handling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and repeated calls for impeachment over her leadership of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Kristi Noem is out at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). But it doesn’t look like her handling of FEMA or ICE led to the decision — though that probably didn’t help. In the end, it was a $220 million ad campaign that promotes not DHS but rather Kristi Noem.
Ecuador Suspends the Country’s Largest Opposition Party
Increased political repression takes place alongside illegal joint military strikes by US and Ecuadorian military forces, and Donald Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” summit Washington, DC — Acting on the request of the government-aligned Prosecutor General, an electoral judge in Ecuador on Friday ordered the nine-month suspension of the country’s largest opposition party, the Citizens’ Revolution (RC ).
Cracking Down on Corporate Tax Scams
With the country in the middle of a needless war and Trump making plans to end democracy, it seems a bit of a sidetrack to be talking about corporate tax policy, but sometimes we need a diversion. And the Trump sleaze is getting so extreme, it deserves some comment. The latest are plans by the administration to greenlight a series of tax avoidance strategies that will cost an estimated $100 billion in revenue over the next decade. To be clear, this is not big bucks in terms of the federal budget.
February CPI Preview: Stable Inflation Despite Rising Gas Prices
The overall CPI rose 0.2 percent in January, while the core index increased 0.3 percent. This brought the year-over-year increase in the overall and core CPI to 2.4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. We have been getting good news recently on inflation in a number of areas, most notably gas prices, which hit a new low for the pandemic recovery in January. The story with gas prices has turned with the run-up to the war with Iran, and now the actual outbreak of war.
The Winning and Losing Countries from High Oil Prices: It’s Not Just Who Has the Oil
There has been a lot of sloppy commentary from people who should know better about who is being hit hardest by the runup in oil and natural gas prices since the start of the war in Iran. There’s a simple story where the countries in Europe and East Asia are the big losers, because they produce relatively little of their own oil. By contrast, the United States is supposedly relatively well-off since we are largely self-sufficient and in fact a net exporter of natural gas.
Bad Jobs Report: Blame It on the Weather
I hate to be giving the Trump administration excuses for a weak economy, but I do feel an obligation to call the data as I see it and not make it up for political convenience. And the excuse actually does not buy them much anyhow. The seemingly simple point is that we might well have gotten a weaker than expected jobs report in February because of weather-related factors. It wasn’t that February weather was especially bad.
Jake Johnston on Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” Summit
CEPR Director of International Research Jake Johnston was on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan González to discuss President Donald Trump’s upcoming “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami, where right-wing leaders from across Latin America are expected to gather to launch a new US-led regional security initiative.
Economy Sheds 92,000 Jobs as Unemployment Edges Up to 4.4 Percent
The establishment survey showed employers shed 92,000 jobs in February, as almost every major sector shed jobs. With downward revisions to the prior two months’ data, and December now showing losses, the average gain over the last three months is just 6,000 jobs. Nearly every major sector had lost jobs in the month, including health care and social assistance, which showed a loss of 18,600 jobs, partly due to strikes in the sector.
The Day Million-Dollar Earners Get Richer by Stiffing Social Security
The vast majority of workers in the United States pay income and payroll taxes on all of their earnings throughout the year. For most, this includes an ever-present 6.2 percent employee-side payroll tax for Social Security, the vital program that provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to millions. On March 9, however, those with wage and salary earnings of a million dollars a year will be relieved of paying into Social Security for the remainder of 2026.
Drugs are Cheap if Patents Don’t Make Them Expensive: The Medicines for the People Act
It is common for people in elite circles to engage in magical thinking unconnected to reality. For example, it is common for people engaged in policy debates to claim that we can get returns in the stock market totally unconnected to the rate of growth in the economy or current levels of the price-to-earnings ratio in the stock market. (We ).
The Donroe Doctrine Fan Club Kicks Off in Miami
For nearly three years the Dominican Republic had been excitedly preparing to host the region’s biggest multilateral event: the 2025 Summit of the Americas, bringing together the leaders of nearly every government in the Western Hemisphere.
(Los Angeles Times) Trump’s War in Iran Is Already Hurting Him at Home
Los Angeles Times Read article on original site The New York Times reported on Monday that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of Feb. 11, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.” This was not commentary or speculation. It was the unambiguous finding of a deeply sourced investigative work produced by 11 of the paper’s reporters who cover wars, the White House, and foreign policy.
Trump’s War on Iran: No Clear Strategy, Global Risks Mount
We are now six days into Trump’s war on Iran, and his team is still trying to figure out the reason. We started with regime change, but Trump quickly decided that he might be okay with leaving someone from the current government in charge. Then he went with the need to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons. That one didn’t work very well either since he was still boasting about having obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program in his attacks last summer.
February Jobs Preview: Can Growth Continue After Strong January?
The January Jobs report came in somewhat better than was generally expected. The establishment survey showed a gain of 130,000 jobs for the month, about 80,000-90,000 more than was generally expected. The household survey also showed a modest drop in unemployment, with the unemployment rate falling to 4.3 percent, 0.2 percentage points (p.p.) below its December level.
Minnesota Fraud vs. Trump’s Numbers: Putting It in Perspective
The Trump administration has decided to make fraud in government programs in Minnesota into a national crisis requiring massive intervention by ICE and Border Patrol (don’t ask) because it was done in part by Black immigrants from Somalia. While Trump and his Republican minions have been hyperventilating over this fraud, it is worth using a little arithmetic to try to put in perspective. Of course, arithmetic is not popular in elite circles.
Manufactured FEMA Funding Crisis Used to Target Democrats and Blue States
The Hill and other outlets recently reported that the Trump administration has released billions in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds for public assistance and hazard mitigation. The funds had previously been delayed due to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s policy requiring a personal review of all expenditures above $100K. The catch?
You Bet Your Life (Insurance): Private Equity Comes For Your Annuity
There are signs that private equity’s destabilizing role in the insurance industry is growing. In 2020 and 2021 (as we wrote at the time), large private equity (PE) firms were buying up life insurance companies to gain control of their huge annuity assets. Insurance companies had invested the premium payments for clients’ retirement savings in safe, publicly traded and highly liquid stocks and bonds.
A Real Abundance Agenda Starts by Rolling Back Patent and Copyright Monopolies
“Abundance” has become the cool word for Democratic politics. The idea is that we need to eliminate government regulations that block housing construction and other projects. While there is certainly value in rolling back excessive regulation, it likely has less benefit than advertised. In the case of housing, we were building plenty of housing before the bubble burst in 2007-10.
CEPR Sanctions Watch February 2026
In this edition of Sanctions Watch, covering February 2026: Trump’s oil blockade spurs economic and humanitarian crisis in Cuba; US and Israel strike Iran amid negotiations over nuclear program and sanctions; Trump eases sanctions on Venezuela‘s oil and gas sectors; EU proposes its 20th package of Russia sanctions; Israel reopens the Rafah crossing in Gaza, but aid groups say access remains too limited; UN Security Council approves a limited humanitarian exemption to North Korea sanctions;...
Iran Regime Change Lessons from Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan
I don’t have any great insights on what is likely to happen in Iran going forward now that its top leadership seems to have been killed by U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. I’m not sure anyone else does either, including Donald Trump. Anyone who thinks that ridding the country of a murderous dictator is clearly a turn for the better, should take a look at Libya today. Libya had been ruled by Moammar Gaddafi from 1969 to 2011.
10 Years After Berta Cáceres’s Assassination, CEPR Calls for All Those Responsible to Be Brought to Justice
Washington, DC — A decade ago today, hit men murdered Honduras’s most prominent environmental and Indigenous rights activist, Berta Cáceres, in her home in La Esperanza. Throughout her short adult life, Cáceres played a critical role in many popular struggles in her country and the hemisphere.
Thailand's demographic burden constrains the economy
Thailand’s shrinking labor force poses an increasing challenge to the economy. Some promising post-pandemic trends have withered, and there are fewer younger workers seeking to join the employment market than there used to be.
Are global food prices easing? It’s a mixed picture
Is the world in for some welcome relief after the 2024-25 rebound in global food-price inflation, or is the situation merely flattered by comparisons with last year?
AI boom triggers memory-chip shortage; South Korea benefits
One of the surprising consequences of the AI boom has been a global memory-chip shortage. To feed the insatiable AI demand, semiconductor firms switched capacity to more profitable, cutting-edge categories (such as high-bandwidth memory, used in AI accelerators and data-center graphics processing units).
Government shutdown masked AI-driven strength in the US
Government shutdown masked AI-driven strength in the US Donald Trump blamed his political opponents for some disappointing economic data. The government shutdown disrupted the US economy to a significant degree – masking the remarkable effects of the artificial intelligence-driven capital-spending boom.
Trump’s Stock Market Is Headed Down as Global Markets Surge
In keeping with his usual manner of confusing big and small, past and present, and up and down, Donald Trump is confused about the movements in the stock market since he took office, and especially in the current year. I recently did a piece pointing out that since Donald Trump took office, the U.S. stock market has had one of the worst performances of any major stock market. But the story is even worse in the current year.
Do “Soft Skills” Explain Low Black Male Employment Rates?
One explanation for the low Black male employment rate that has been put forth by prominent scholars is that Black men are weak in what are called “soft skills.” For example, the distinguished sociologist William Julius Wilson writes in More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, “In the past, men simply had to demonstrate a strong back and muscles to be hired for physical labor in a factory, at a construction site, or on an assembly line; they interacted with peers and...
The Ellisons Taking Over Warner is Pants on Fire Stuff, but Team Progressive Just Whines
If I said, “Citizens United,” every card-carrying progressive would immediately yell that it let the rich take over elections. But if we ask how, the argument would quickly descend into gibberish. Yeah, Citizens United lets corporations spend unlimited money on PACs. We get it. So, the hypothesis is that if the money were instead in the hands of rich shareholders like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, instead of the corporations, they wouldn’t be able to figure out how to influence elections?
Navigate ASEAN Divergence with Clarity: A Data‑Driven Outlook for 2026
Understanding ASEAN markets is becoming more complex as growth, FX performance, trade flows and tech cycles increasingly diverge across the region. Our latest on‑demand webinar, Navigating ASEAN Divergence: A Data‑Driven Outlook for 2026, shows how CEIC’s ASEAN Premium brings clarity to this fast‑shifting landscape by transforming fragmented local data into a unified, comparable view.
Exploring Aluminium Insights with CEIC
Market intelligence, procurement and strategy teams can deploy our unique range of datasets to understand up-and-coming sources for aluminum demand and make better decisions. We focus on six key industrial pillars shaping the future: the automotive sector, construction, packaging, machinery, electronics & electrical equipment, and consumer durables. Granular information on subsectors of these industries can be combined with our macroeconomic and market data to power your forecasts and models.
The Washington Post Says We Should Stop Paying Interest on Government Bonds Because It All Goes to the Rich
Of course, Jeff Bezos opinion section didn’t advocate a measure that would hurt his rich friends, it gave a version this absurd argument as a reason to get rid of Social Security. It lent space to right-wing commentator Ramesh Ponnuru to tell people “Don’t Save Social Security.” Ponnuru quickly tells us of Social Security’s fatal flaw: “As two experts on the program recently wrote, Social Security sends only 7 percent of its benefits to the poorest 20 percent of senior citizens.
What Triggers Bubbles to Burst? Lessons From Tech and Housing
I often get that question. I can’t say I have a very good answer. Going back to the last bubbles, it would be difficult to identify any events in the world that precipitated the collapse of either the 90s tech bubble or the housing bubble in the 00s. Both times the economy seemed to be moving along at healthy clip just prior to the collapse. There had been warnings in both cases.
New Paper Explores Black Workers in the South and Their Views on Labor Unions
A new exploratory research study highlights the challenges faced by Black workers in the Southeast, and offers some insight into how those workers view labor unions.
FEMA Aid Reorganization Could Prioritize Speed Over Survivors
In the midst of a partial government shutdown affecting disaster and emergency services across the US, the saga of the missing report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Review Council continued last week. If you need a reminder on what has happened so far, check out our overview here. The short story is that in early 2025, Trump appointed a council to determine whether the agency should continue to exist in its current form.
New Research Reveals Millions Will Lose Medicare Advantage Coverage This Year
Nearly 3 million Americans will lose their Medicare Advantage plan this year, according to an estimate from a research letter published in the major medical journal JAMA (formerly known as the Journal of the American Medical Association). This news is a consequence of how the Medicare Advantage program is built to favor the enrichment of health insurers over providing coverage to American seniors. Medicare Advantage is private insurance for seniors that is funded by taxpayers.
Trump’s Healthcare Affordability Pitch: Shift Costs to Patients
It’s no secret that the failure of Congressional Republicans to extend the enhanced premium subsidies for insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges led to dramatic increases in premium costs for individuals. Health care jumped to the top of the list of affordability concerns of American consumers, ahead of monthly utilities, food and groceries, housing, and gasoline.
US - Europe Productivity Gap Is Mostly a Statistical Illusion - CEPR
There is a widely told story among elite pundit types that the US economy is soaring ahead, and Europe’s economy is mired in stagnation. As is the case most of the time when there is an elite consensus, it is wrong. A new post by Seth Ackerman shows that the differences in growth, and especially productivity growth (GDP per hour of work), are driven almost entirely by differences in measurement, not differences in economic performance.
Instead of Greenland, Governor Landry Might Want to Send the Hospital Boat to Louisiana
In its latest effort at clownery, the Trump administration announced that it would send a hospital boat to Greenland to provide healthcare to the population there.
Q4 GDP Slumps as Federal Cuts and High Inflation Weigh on Growth
The GDP story for the 4th quarter looked much worse than was generally expected. The big factor dragging down growth was a 16.6% drop in federal spending. Part of this drop was due to the government shutdown, but this was likely the less important factor since most government employees continued to work during the shutdown. (The 2018-2019 shutdown is barely visible in the data.) The larger cause of the shrinkage was the DOGE cuts put in place by Elon Musk earlier in the year.
Supreme Court Decision Deals a Blow to Trump’s Use of Tariffs for Economic Warfare in Cuba
Decision Disallows Certain Tariffs That Force Other Countries to Join Embargo and Strangle Cuban Economy Washington, DC — “The Supreme Court decision released today dealt a blow to President Trump’s use of tariffs as a weapon of economic warfare,” said Mark Weisbrot, Senior Economist and Co-Director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
Soft Investment, Falling Federal Spending Lower GDP Growth to 1.4 Percent in Q4
A sharp decline in federal spending knocked 1.15 percentage points off the growth rate in the fourth quarter. Some of this was clearly due to the government shutdown, which will be reversed in the first quarter of this year, but most of the falloff was due to cutbacks put in place by the Trump administration. (Roughly two-thirds of federal employees worked through the shutdown.) However, the federal government was not the only source of weakness in the report.
Ecuador News Round-Up No. 25: Ecuador’s Security and Human Rights Crisis Deepens as the Government Renews Attacks on the Opposition
Fact-based, data-driven research and analysis to advance democratic debate on vital issues shaping people’s lives. Center for Economic and Policy Research 1611 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20009 Tel: 202-293-5380 Fax: 202-588-1356 https://cepr.net Close Executive Summary Ecuador ended 2025 with a record homicide rate of 51 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, surpassing the previous peak of 46 in 2023 and representing a dramatic rise from just 5.8 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017.
(Newsweek) Trump’s Oil Blockade of Cuba Is Economic Violence. It Must End
Newsweek Read article on original site Near the peak of US military escalation in the Vietnam war, Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the US government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In the ensuing years the US government has developed, at an accelerating rate, a new method of delivering lethal violence to achieve its aims: broad, unilateral economic sanctions.
Clean Energy Is Cheaper, Trump Is Locking in Higher Costs
It is common to talk about a tradeoff between the economy and the environment, the idea being that protecting and cleaning up the environment cost money that could otherwise be spent on consumption or investment. It’s a bit simplistic to make a sharp distinction, since not dealing with the environment imposes very direct economic costs, such as the destruction caused by climate change linked hurricanes and flooding or medical expenses due to exposure to toxins in the air or water.
GDP Preview: What to Expect in the Fourth Quarter 2025 Report
The tariffs had a whipsaw effect where trade was a huge negative for GDP in the first quarter, as consumers and businesses rushed to import items ahead of the imposition of tariffs. In the second and third quarters it was a large positive, as imports fell back to more normal levels after the big accumulations in the first quarter. It is likely to again be a substantial positive in the fourth quarter as imports drop to lower levels in response to the tariffs.
Trump Census Test Changes Threaten Accuracy of the 2030 Census
The Trump administration recently announced significant changes to the 2026 Operational Test for the 2030 Census. If implemented, the changes would undermine the utility of what should be a broad, multi-site rehearsal of census operations, potentially compromising the validity of the 2030 Census results. The changes transform the test from a safeguard into a source of additional risk and uncertainty.
Trump Cuts Federal Contractor Minimum Wage, Slashing Worker Pay
This month, the Department of Labor issued adjustments that set a new minimum wage for federal contractors at $13.65 (effective May 2026). This change followed President Trump’s executive order in March 2025, which replaced the Biden-era rule that raised the minimum to $15 and reached $17.75 by January 2025. This change appears to revert the minimum wage to levels similar to those at the end of the Obama administration, where it was adjusted over time to approximately $13.30 by 2026.
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