Colleagues, policymakers and working Americans,

Hello and welcome to Working Economics, the new blog of the Economic Policy Institute.  Since its founding in 1986, EPI has had a special focus on the living standards of working families and we have done so for a simple reason: We believe that the measure of a good economy is whether it is providing rising living standards to the vast majority. That is the bottom line and discussions about Gross Domestic Product, productivity, trade or even rising employment must be vitally linked to how they connect to improved economic well-being and quality of life for our nation’s working families. And, for the record, “working families” includes those who want to work but cannot find work as well as those in retirement, living off of the pensions, Social Security and savings generated during their working years.

EPI’s mission is to inform people and empower them to seek solutions that will ensure broadly shared prosperity and opportunity. Consequently, EPI offers a steady stream of policy solutions that will steer the economy toward robust and widely shared growth. We believe it is not enough to describe the world and the challenges we face. Rather, it is critically important to point the way toward how we can make the economy work for us all. As EPI and others have established, the economy has not worked well for most people over the last three decades, even before the crushing pain of the current persistent, high unemployment and all of the associated ills. None of this happened by accident and the unacceptable outcomes we have experienced should not and need not be accepted. That is the context for our establishment of this new blog.

Working Economics will provide EPI an additional tool for communicating about the economy and economic policy. It will provide an effective mechanism for engaging in the issues that people are thinking about every day. The blog will help EPI analyze and respond to breaking economic news quicker than ever before. It will also allow us to surface many of the analyses which we regularly undertake but do not showcase in the public sphere. The blog provides a forum for EPI researchers to present EPI’s work in a conversational and engaging manner. We recognize that EPI’s biggest asset is our hard-earned reputation for doing solid empirical and policy analysis. Therefore, our blog posts will maintain the same high quality readers have come to expect from EPI.

Our ultimate goal is to make Working Economics a resource for those trying to understand the economy and for those trying to find ways to make the economy work for everyone. Reading Working Economics will give you insights into how the economy works and for whom it is working. We hope you’ll enjoy our entry into the blogosphere and read us regularly.

Thank you,

Lawrence Mishel
EPI President