Economist at @epi.org https://www.epi.org/people/ben-zipperer/
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Everything cited or claimed in this is an outright lie or misleading False claim about manufacturing jobs and tariffs cepr.org/voxeu/column... Lie about Trump's tax cuts and their primary benefits to the wealthy www.nbcnews.com/politics/con... www.whitehouse.gov/videos/press...
A Democratic candidate for prosecutor in Virginia wants lawmakers to ban ICE agents from operating while masked or while concealing their identities; she says she’d then prosecute those who don’t comply.
and the meticulous picture peepers will be able to observe the side effects of living with an ornithologist: hummingbirds in your freezer
was excited to have a cocktail because I've been making a bunch of clear ice
end of summer gin and tonic
ICE's Detained Population Now at Record 61,226 People ICE's latest data show record detention numbers, growing GPS ankle monitor usage, and dip in arrests since June. PLUS: This newsletter just crossed 10,000 subscribers—thank you! 🎉 austinkocher.substack.com/p/ices-detai...
Even if Trump only deports half of his goal (500k annually instead of 1 million per year), after four years there will be 1.5 million fewer jobs Half of these employment reductions will be in construction and child care, where immigrants and US born workers will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs
Even if Trump only deports half of his goal (500k annually instead of 1 million per year), after four years there will be 1.5 million fewer jobs Half of these employment reductions will be in construction and child care, where immigrants and US born workers will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs
Latest US deportation data through August 23: the rate is now about 1200 deportations every day, about half of Trump's goal This data is noisy and very imperfect, but there was a slight drop in deportations from the previous peak
and also self-destructive on the most narrow economic grounds: foreigners buying stuff in the US is one of our major exports! Foreign students spend $56 billion a year Foreign travelers and students are three quarters of the entire US trade surplus in services
Update: we are at 379 signatures in support of Lisa Cook and Fed independence! The letter be open for signatures through Sun. (Link to sign at the top). If you are on X or listservs, please spread the word there! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Latest Gallup poll data reveal, once again, that the main obstacles to unions in the the US are broken labor laws and employer aggression Two-thirds of the US public approves of labor unions, but unions only represent about 11 percent of the workforce
A $17 minimum wage is about 2/3 of the current US median wage, the same minimum wage target the UK recently achieved
#RStats geeks: you too can easily create inflation-adjusted data with the realtalk package, which makes it easy to grab historical data on overall US price levels (and also includes some example data on US minimum wages) economic.github.io/realtalk/
62 years ago today the 1963 March on Washington demanded a powerful workers' rights agenda and end to segregation The $2 minimum wage they proposed would be worth over $17 today That's a $20k annual earnings increase over the current federal minimum wage for a full-time, full-year worker
🚨Border Patrol arrested two firefighters who were actively fighting a wildfire at the time. When the other members of the crew asked for a chance to say goodbye, a Border Patrol agent told the crew member “you need to get the f*ck out of here. I’m going to make you leave.”
one amazing feature here is simply loading the entire dataset would probably freeze your laptop! instead you can run this regression quickly and not worry about memory problems, thanks to the magic of duckdb and dbreg
The letter is ready, thanks to all those who helped out! Starting to gather signature now, please consider signing (link at top of letter) & spread the word. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
A doubling of identity theft rates would affect 50 million people www.epi.org/publication/...
Trump doing his best to guarantee a massive increase in identity theft
Trump's attempted removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook a flagrant violation of the law, and it will raise interest rates and lead to higher costs for working people from @hshierholz.bsky.social www.epi.org/press/trumps...
I think it's a mistake to think of the firing of Lisa Cook primarily in terms of Central Bank Independence, and its impact on the inflation rate. The most significant issue is also more basic: it's the rule of law.
This is the make or break moment for Powell's @federalreserve.gov. If they do not defend Lisa Cook and treat her as still on the Board, the fight over the Fed as an independent agency will officially be over. see my Friday piece. www.crisesnotes.com/trump-vs-pow...
Trump perceives basically all independent institutions as a threat to himself, including economic institutions like the BLS and the Fed, he won't stop trying to wreck them until he's out of office, and it's everyday Americans who are going to feel the consequences
I was expecting Michael Mann's Thief to be a fun heist flick but not also an excellent film about labor and class conflict
My favorite thing to make with the surplus is Oded Schwartz's spicy ketchup. Really delicious in winter after it mellows for a few months
Long before she joined the Fed, Lisa Cook stood out in a field dominated by white men. She talked about how her experience with racism informed her approach to economics. Now, she is Trump’s latest target in his effort to exert more control over the central bank. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/b...
This sort of admission—the VP is involved in prosecutorial decisions, the "concerns" arise from political actors, and the administration knows they don't have probable cause—would have prompted the Founders to impeach everyone involved.
You can tell yourself we are not living under a personalist authoritarian regime or you can listen to the spokesperson for that regime
Actually the research on this shows that housing prices increase because deportations eliminate construction jobs and reduce the number of new homes being built
Ruby Sales, who Daniels saved, went on to get degrees at Tuskegee Institute, Manhattanville College, and Princeton University. She's still alive Daniels' murderer, who killed Daniels and wounded another activist (a Catholic priest), was never convicted and died peacefully in his late 80s
Night Moves (1975) with Gene Hackman
May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.
There are some interesting results in the paper that try to get at these channels, suggesting a temporary reduction in resale prices, perhaps caused by a quick drop in housing demand, later shifting to price increases as supply constraints begin to dominate
the stories in here are heartbreaking www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
yep, as i have written a bunch, the great lie of white supremacy is the idea that all whites are supreme. it’s a ruse! there is a reason dubois called it a “psychological wage” because those rubes weren’t getting a real wage out of it bsky.app/profile/john...
Actually the research on this shows that housing prices increase because deportations eliminate construction jobs and reduce the number of new homes being built
JUST IN: Federal appeals court just *upheld* Gov. Youngkin's 2022 decision to eliminate automatic rights restoration in VA. So people with a felony remain barred from voting *for life.* Bolts reported here on people who were banned from voting, incl. one man who later became center of this lawsuit:
is there an easier prediction than that, five years from now, there will be stories about how China now dominates the commercialization and innovation of yet another technology invented in the US? see @ryanlcooper.com on mRNA vaccines prospect.org/health/2025-...
As of late last month, the investigation—led by US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat of Georgia—had unearthed 41 cases of physical and sexual abuse; 14 involving pregnant detainees and 18 involving children.
Deportations and detentions will inflict a lot of damage on the US economy 1/ paulkrugman.substack.com/p/iceing-the...
Unions do more than just improve wages and benefits. They build stronger communities and strengthen democracy. A new report from @epi.org shows that where unions thrive, communities thrive. Imagine what we could achieve if more people had a voice at work. www.epi.org/publication/...
Wages of unionized workers are 13% higher than their nonunion counterparts. But unions also set a higher pay standard that all workers enjoy. In high-union-density states, median household income is $12,000 higher than in low-union-density states. This is why unions are vital.
One of the biggest open secrets of the 21st century is that most of the things people blame for workers not getting a fair shake -- technological unemployment, outsourcing -- aren't nearly as big a deal as the law continuing to become more hostile to the existence of unions.
that's totally unfair, they're probably *this close* to an important physics breakthrough
![screenshot of text from an interview with Travis Kalanick, which reads: “I’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” Kalanick explained. “And we’re approaching what’s known. And I’m trying to poke and see if there’s breakthroughs to be had. And I’ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.” interview described at https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qpyvsjongvk4oiuntlzd5go4/bafkreigtppzwj4bqltlm7vutoeirk3j35aa3pvezzkpz3lb2klsf2nbqji@jpeg "Click to view full size")
easily one of the R packages I use the most is @milesmcbain.bsky.social's breakerofchains, which elegantly runs everything in a piped command up to the current line No more fussy highlighting of just the right parts!
every single thing Trump says is a lie
To use breakerofchains in Positron, put something like this in your keybindings.json
easily one of the R packages I use the most is @milesmcbain.bsky.social's breakerofchains, which elegantly runs everything in a piped command up to the current line No more fussy highlighting of just the right parts!
Many of my favorite #RStats packages are from @milesmcbain.bsky.social and this is shaping up to be another extremely useful utility
wait you don't just use unlist(lapply(dir()[which(grepl("Incumbents", dir()))], function(x) ifelse(file.exists(x), x, NA)), use.names = FALSE)
Some useful advice fromt he the ACLU.
Trump's war on immigrants is not generating jobs for US-born workers Compared to last year, prime-age employment rates of US-born workers are pretty similar and may be lower
No, Native-Born Employment Has Not Soared www.briefingbook.info/cp/171234316
Last week, I talked to a DC-based PhD student who told me she's now afraid to leave her house after dark. Not because of any crime threat, but because of all the federal agents swarming her neighborhood.
Federal occupation is causing problems, not the locals.
More proof Trump is bad for business: restaurant reservations fell by 30 percent during Trump's occupation of Washington DC
Attacking federal employees and making data disappear are two themes of this administration. So this is a twofer: the annual survey of federal employees has been cancelled. Obvious reason is to hide big declines in worker morale, engagement and satisfaction. federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/20...
If you find yourself arguing that human beings shouldn't be provided with toothbrushes and toothpaste, you are the 1000% the baddies. The lawyers making this argument for the government should be shunned. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
NEW: Video shared with me from a bystander in DC shows multiple masked federal agents (at least one of whom appears to have an ICE badge) violently attacking and handcuffing a delivery worker in the street outside Bluestone Lane cafe near Logan Circle this morning. Please take care when watching.
Congrats!!
latest data from ICE: the pace of deportations continued to increase in August Trump is now deporting people at a rate of about half of his stated goal of 1 million per year
It's a good question. They have every incentive to exaggerate these numbers to be consistent with their goals but so far they don't seem to be doing that. And also for previous months at least these data are generally consistent with separate data ICE has been forced to release
If Trump achieves his goal of one million deportations each year, millions of US-born and immigrant workers will lose their jobs
latest data from ICE: the pace of deportations continued to increase in August Trump is now deporting people at a rate of about half of his stated goal of 1 million per year
extremely tasty roadside tacos de carnitas from Carmelitas in Cape Charles, VA
By now you've heard that native-born employment is up by millions, according to the jobs report, right? Not true. Not conceivably true. That analysis is a multiple-count data felony -- as Census and BLS warn. I took a long romp through the details. jedkolko.substack.com/p/no-native-...
This is great, see also
See also
ICE spending its massive new budget keeping America safe from [checks notes...] house painters and nursing mothers who teach Sunday school at church. www.startribune.com/lawyer-asks-...
Correction: the new head of US labor statistics recorded a podcast promoting Project 2025 IN FRONT OF AN IMAGE OF A NAZI WARSHIP. Compare the pictures. Who would put the Bismarck on their wall? Can we finally talk about the actual Nazis in our government? (Flagged by @fitch64.bsky.social) 1/
beachbound
1/3 of BLS leadership positions are currently vacant. Field offices around the country are closing due to staff shortages. They fired the advisory council that was assessing how to increase survey response rates. These are not actions you take if you actually want to improve the data.
A Chicago woman went to immigration court. Her case was dismissed; she and her infant were taken by federal agents who turned her over to contractor MVM. They spent five days confined at the Sonesta O'Hare hotel without communication to the outside world. My first byline at @injusticewatch.org:
The 1967-1968 federal minimum expanded coverage, making the policy more universal (previously it excluded restaurants and services often employing Black workers). It also raised the minimum to its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms: $12.30 in today's dollars data.epi.org/minimum_wage...
The 1967-1968 federal minimum expanded coverage, making the policy more universal (previously it excluded restaurants and services often employing Black workers). It also raised the minimum to its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms: $12.30 in today's dollars data.epi.org/minimum_wage...
for the full paper from Carillo Sampaio @danielaraujoec.bsky.social and Iglesias: dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...
interesting new research on the long-run effects of the 1967-1968 US minimum wage the policy increased the income of parents, and their young kids were more likely to go to college and graduate, as well as to earn higher incomes later in life. older kids were less affected.
Regardless of politics, economists should make clear: we do not condone reckless attacks on our statistical agencies, including by our fellow economists. The staff at these agencies work painstakingly to collect the data our democracy and economy depend on.
I think this is very plausible but also it could be that the foreign born population is indeed shrinking (and this mechanically increases the estimated US born population level)
For more on this:
There is not a sudden explosion of the US born population. Instead the Jan 2025 population benchmarks are outdated: Trump is shrinking the immigrant population. The predetermined total population estimate, and a falling immigrant population, artificially increases the estimated US born population
Tonight Trump illegally stripped collective bargaining rights from 400,000 workers without telling the governments lawyers.
Delaware just passed a law that bans local sheriffs and police departments from entering into the so-called 287(g) agreements with ICE: whyy.org/articles/del...
Trump's war on immigrants is not translating into jobs for US-born workers These data are noisy but it seems like prime-age US-born employment rates are not any higher and may be slightly lower than those last year
Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.
We’ve discovered a literal miracle with almost unlimited potential and it’s being scrapped for *no reason whatsoever*. This isn’t even nihilism, it’s outright worship of death and human suffering.
Important to remember that because of the incredible work of government statisticians, initial BLS employment estimates have become MORE accurate. Its revisions are now smaller than those from years past excellent figure from @ernietedeschi.bsky.social
In 1st half of 2025 (2025H1), economic growth decelerated to about half its 2024H2 speed The magnitude of BLS revisions to monthly estimates of change in jobs tends to rise in recessions (shaded, other than mild 2001) Could contribute to magnitudes' rise from 0.02% of jobs to .03% #KnownFromBLS
the purpose of this is to make racism not just acceptable but mandatory. nationwide Jim Crow, controlled by a network of neo-Nazi political commisars who report directly to the executive.
Foreign-born employment is falling because of the large foreign born population reduction in recent months but also because those that remain are working at lower rates Very consistent with increased immigration enforcement making it riskier for immigrants to show up to work
Trump's war on immigrants is not translating into jobs for US-born workers These data are noisy but it seems like prime-age US-born employment rates are not any higher and may be slightly lower than those last year
ISM® Services Index Decreased to 50.1% in July; Prices Paid Highest Since 2022 www.calculatedriskblog.com/2025/08/ism-... This was well below consensus expectations, and employment was very weak, and prices paid high.
