Media clips

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• Report Sparks Questions Over Transparency Into Private Equity Holdings

  Last week, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project in conjunction with Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, two nonprofit organizations, released a “private equity scorecard,” a report that listed and graded the top eight private equity buyout firms invested in oil and gas. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project puts out information and data related to private equity’s impact on housing, healthcare, climate and energy, and civil rights. Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund is an activist group focusing on developing a “fair and just” financial system. It is a coalition of over 200 national organizations, including the American Sustainable Business Council, Economic Policy Institute, and the Center for Economic Progress.

  Institutional Investor September 21, 2022
• The child poverty rate fell by nearly half in 2021 as enhanced child tax credit sent billions of dollars to families

  “Though there were more jobs in 2022, families were certainly more squeezed by rising prices,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “And so the disappearance of this child tax credit would have hurt more.”

  CNN September 16, 2022
• The economics behind ‘quiet quitting’ — and what we should call it instead

  But the concept has drawn much criticism — for being a misnomer, for example. Or for overshadowing the “quiet firing” trend, where companies passively aggressively make their employees’ work lives unhappy, and “quiet fleecing,” which refers to workers’ pay lagging behind their increased productivity for decades.

  OPB September 16, 2022
• Why Is There a Teacher Shortage in the US? Here’s What’s Causing it and What it Means for Students

  Another factor that has contributed to many teachers leaving the field: lack of competitive pay. In August, the Economic Policy Institute released data that found teachers make about 23% less in their profession than “comparable college graduates” in other fields. This low pay, combined with teaching during a pandemic and other stressors, has caused many teachers to resign.

  Teen Vogue September 16, 2022
• The Railroad Strike Highlights A Forgotten Part Of The Supply Chain: Workers

  “Throughout 2021, strikes provided workers critical leverage to bargain over fair pay, safe working conditions, and a share of the pandemic recovery,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a blog post.

  Forbes September 16, 2022
• Study finds proposed ‘millionaires tax’ could help reduce inequality, if revenue is wisely spent

  According to numbers from the state Department of Revenue, a tiny portion of Massachusetts households — 0.6% — made incomes over $1 million in 2019. Some 90% those households were white. The Economic Policy Institute has ranked Massachusetts as the sixth worst state in the country for income inequality.

  WBUR September 16, 2022
• Why US Workers Are Better Situated to Confront Economic Turbulence

  International comparisons of inflation rates are notoriously difficult to make, and even when one manages to compare the numbers, the environments are different. For instance, when new cars became more difficult to find, Americans were harder hit because we use cars more and spend more on them than Europeans do. Looking beyond the energy and food price increases caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has a core inflation rate of 5.9 percent over the past 12 months. The rate is 5.4 percent in Canada and 5.5 percent in the United Kingdom. Across the G7 nations, the rate is 4.8 percent, and across Europe it’s 6.8 percent. “Rising inflation is a global problem,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  The Nation September 16, 2022
• Grading President Biden’s Economic Record

  A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute details a number of positive reforms from the Biden administration, often below-the-radar, but including strong, high-profile appointments to the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court. Incidentally, these appointments reflect a serious commitment to anti-racism. Relatedly, if we consider the well-being of immigrants in an anti-racist, labor framework, the reversal of some of the most xenophobic Trump policies is also noteworthy. When it comes to the PRO Act, Biden has been vocal in his support for the omnibus labor legislation but, again, resistance from certain Democratic senators has stymied its passage in Congress. 

  In These Times September 16, 2022
• How inflation has eaten into Americans’ average weekly pay in the past year

  If there is any consolation for workers, it is that jobs remain plentiful, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

  “If workers were facing it [inflation] with higher unemployment … people would have fallen even further behind,” he said, adding that the impact of higher prices on Americans’ standard of living is indisputable.

  “Inflation has reduced people’s purchasing power. There’s no two ways about it.”

  NBC News September 16, 2022
• Household income stayed flat in 2021, census data shows

  Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that changed. At least for workers at the bottom and in the middle, said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute.

  “Instead, we’ve seen wages at the top rise, we’ve seen a declining value of the minimum wage, we’ve seen measures implemented that make it harder for workers to form a union,” Gould said.

  Marketplace September 16, 2022
• There’s a solution to the labor shortage — and it’s the undocumented workers who are already here

  According to Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers who are already in our labor market would mutually benefit both our economy and the undocumented workers themselves. These workers often face horrific working conditions

  Salon September 16, 2022
• Worker Power Is Weakening, Indicators Show

  1. DOWN: Inflation-adjusted wages and salaries. Although wages are up, prices are rising faster. Between August 2021 to August 2022. While private-sector workers’ earnings rose by 4.6%, inflation shot up by 8%. In 12 of 13 sectors I studied, workers’ raises failed to keep up with price increases (the exception was mining; not even construction and leisure and hospitality kept pace with inflation). It is not plausible that worker bargaining power is causing price increases. Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, argues, “labor costs are dampening—not amplifying—price pressures.” In other words, workers’ rising wages have alleviated rather than exacerbated inflation.

  Here’s a little more context: since 1979, U.S. wages adjusted for inflation have stagnated compared to the rest of the G7 nations, as well as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. There has also been meager improvement for American workers in other measures such as total compensation and working conditions. The increasing automation of tasks may lead to new kinds of stress and injuries, research suggests. The Economic Policy Institute has dubbed employers’ ability to intensify the working hour and day without increasing pay as “quiet fleecing.”

  4. DOWN: Wages are not keeping pace with worker productivity. Since the Economic Policy Institute published the famous alligator graph in the 1980s, with the wide jaws of productivity going up and wages going down, workers have been giving more to the economy than they have been getting. This is the “quiet fleecing” mentioned above.

  Forbes September 16, 2022
• Workers at Amazon, Chipotle, and Starbucks are winning union elections. But it might take years before they see a contract

  It takes unions an average of 409 days to negotiate a contract, according to a study conducted by Bloomberg Law. And just under half of newly formed unions reach a contract before the one year decertification deadline, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. PAYWALL

   
  Fortune September 16, 2022
• Most U.S. workers say their pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

  Not surprisingly, surging prices have hit lower-paid workers especially hard. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 buys less today than it has at any point over the past 66 years, an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows. The current value of the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since February 1956, when the lowest U.S. wage was 75 cents — the equivalent of $7.19 in June 2022 dollars.

  CBS September 16, 2022
• These states are raising their minimum wage based on today’s CPI report as inflation remains stubbornly high

  Dave Kamper, a senior state policy coordinator at the Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune that the automatic minimum wage adjustments help low-wage workers in certain states keep up with inflation. 

  “This is what indexing the minimum wage does: It means that the lowest-wage workers don’t have to wait for a legislature to get its act together and raise the minimum wage for them to keep up,” he said. “Prices are up this year, considerably higher than what we’ve been used to for a long time, and low-wage workers are going to suffer from that more than anyone else.” 

  Kamper said the other five states, and D.C., that don’t use August’s CPI report will still see an increase in minimum wage but at various times throughout the year. Also, he said, more states are likely to begin indexing their minimum wage based on inflation because wages are growing slower than prices. 

  “What we’re seeing here is that as prices go up, worker wages are falling behind,” he said. 

  Nonetheless, Kamper thinks it should be a federal policy that the federal minimum wage be tied to inflation. It allows for predictability and stability for workers, and it gives them the ability to keep up with inflation as the costs of goods soar, he said.

  “Indexing the minimum wage means the state’s minimum wage is protected from prevailing changes in the political winds,” Kamper added. 

  Fortune September 16, 2022
• Florida has a problem with minimum wage violations and it could get worse

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, Florida is one of just a handful of states nationwide that lacks a state labor department, which — prior to its abolition — had tracked workforce statistics, housed a hotline for workers to learn about their rights, and had served as a mechanism for enforcing wage and hour laws.

  88.5 WMNF September 16, 2022
• Behind the highest union approval ratings in 60 years

  The Economic Policy Institute unpacked the question after Gallup released its annual survey on union favorability.

  “U.S. workers see unions as critical to fixing our nation’s broken workplace – where most workers have little power or agency at work,” EPI concludes.

  The pandemic spotlighted the ways essential workers kept their communities running during the worst public health crisis in a century despite inadequate pay or crucial tools they need to perform their jobs. However, these struggles pre-dated the pandemic.

  “Workers today are rejecting these dynamics and awakening to the benefits of unions,” EPI says.

  But what are those benefits? According to EPI, there are many.

  First, pay and benefits.

  EPI notes that “unionized workers … earn on average 10.2% more in wages than nonunionized peers” and “union workers are more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance. More than 9 in 10 workers covered by a union contract (95%) have access to employer-sponsored health benefits, compared with just 69% of nonunion workers.”

  According to EPI, unions even benefit nonunion workers by raising standards across the board.

  But unions benefit society in even broader ways.

  “Black and Hispanic workers get a larger boost from unionization,” states EPI, with unionized black workers earning 13.1% more than their nonunionized peers and Hispanic workers earning 18.8% more.

  Women also benefit from unions, earning 4.7% more than non-union women workers.

  EPI also found a correlation between states with a weak union presence and states where voting laws were being threatened.

  “Over 70% of low-union-density states passed at least one voter suppression law between 2011 and 2019.”

  Conversely, states with higher union density passed fewer restrictive voting laws, according to EPI.

  AFSCME September 16, 2022
• Wanted: Teachers. No training necessary.

  Critics of these moves worry about the consequences of putting adults without proper training in front of students at a time when school closures have cratered academic outcomes. Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that high-poverty schools have less-experienced and less-qualified teachers than wealthier ones and that teacher shortages are more acute in high-poverty schools.

   
  The Washington Post September 16, 2022
• Quantifying an “alarming” teacher shortage
  • A seminal 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute called the teacher shortage “real, large and growing, and worse than we thought.” It found that high-poverty schools suffer the most from the shortage of credentialed teachers.
  Axios September 16, 2022
• Jennifer Lawrence Slams Gender Pay Gap: ‘I’m Still Not Going to Get Paid as Much’

  The pay disparity between men and women is ongoing – with data from the Economic Policy Institute showing that the wage gap was still a 22.1% difference in 2021.

  Entrepreneur September 16, 2022
• Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Ban Anti-Union “Right-to-Work” Laws

  As a press release on the bill points out, “right-to-work” laws result in 5 percent lower union rates and a decrease in overall wages for full-time workers of about $11,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Truthout September 16, 2022
• Media Summon Inflation Specter to Oppose Student Debt Forgiveness

  On top of this, the central argument in Goldwien’s case and across corporate media—that debt relief will spur demand—rests on the assumption that canceling people’s debt will incentivize them to buy things for which there is not enough supply to keep prices stable. Heidi Shierholtz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, took to Twitter (5/12/22) to shut this argument down:

  The latest version of the claim “we can’t have nice things because inflation” is the idea that we can’t cancel federal student debt.… But folks, there is currently a pause on federal student loan repayments, which means that people with this debt don’t currently have debt payments. So even if somebody’s debt is entirely canceled under a new policy, their monthly costs won’t decrease relative to what they currently are. This will dramatically limit any impact on new spending and hence provide no upward inflation pressure relative to the status quo.

  FAIR September 16, 2022
• Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Bolster Union Power

  Several studies have found that worker wages suffer in right-to-work states. A 2011 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) paper found that wages in these states were 3.1 percent lower, after controlling for outside economic factors, like higher cost of living in some states. A study from EPI five years later found that the decline in union power in the US was tied to a decrease in wages of up to 8 percent. A analysis from Rep. Sherman’s office found that in 2020, annual wages in right-to-work states were about $11,000 less on average than in states that don’t have this kind of union-weakening legislation.

  Mother Jones September 16, 2022
• The squeeze is on renters everywhere

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, 46 percent of renters nationwide are paying more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing. 

  The home ownership rate in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2021 was 65.5 percent. Partially because apartment rentals in New York City are so widespread, home ownership in New York State is only 53.6 percent.

  Hudson Valley One September 16, 2022
• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says a return to office will solve inflation. Maybe in a different era he’d be right

  There’s more than meets the eye, though, when it comes to productivity rates, reached by dividing the GDP by the number of hours worked. Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune back in May that a close look at GDP numbers actually shows “healthy growth.” She said the dip in worker productivity is more due to a decline in inventory and increase in imports.

  Fortune September 16, 2022
• Is Remote Work Contributing to Higher Inflation?

  On the other hand, the Economic Policy Institute says that between 1979 and 2019, while net productivity increased by close to 60%, worker compensation only grew by about 16%. Additionally, wage inflation this year has still not kept pace with the rise in inflation, so perhaps compensation is simply catching up to productivity right now.

  Lincoln Journal Star September 16, 2022
• Analysis Shows ‘Quiet Fleecing’ of US Workers—Not ‘Quiet Quitting’—Is the Real Problem

  “Quiet quitting”—an allegedly new trend characterized by workers performing only their required job duties and no more—has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, but the defining trend of the past 40 years of U.S. economic history is “quiet fleecing,” and we should be talking much more about it.

  “The reality is workers have long been going ‘above and beyond’ and not getting paid for it.”

  That’s the argument put forth Friday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank with a long track record of popularizing research on wage suppression and runaway inequality.

  “Everyone’s obsessed with a post-pandemic phenomenon called ‘quiet quitting,’” EPI wrote in an email. “It’s basically defined as workers just doing the basic requirements of their jobs and not going ‘above and beyond.’”

  “But the reality is workers have long been going ‘above and beyond’ and not getting paid for it,” EPI continued. “We’re calling this phenomenon ‘quiet fleecing.’”

  Common Dreams September 16, 2022
• September 16, 2022
  September 16, 2022
• The child poverty rate fell by nearly half in 2021 as enhanced child tax credit sent billions of dollars to families

  “Though there were more jobs in 2022, families were certainly more squeezed by rising prices,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “And so the disappearance of this child tax credit would have hurt more.”

  CNN September 16, 2022
• Worker Power Is Weakening, Indicators Show

  1. DOWN: Inflation-adjusted wages and salaries. Although wages are up, prices are rising faster. Between August 2021 to August 2022. While private-sector workers’ earnings rose by 4.6%, inflation shot up by 8%. In 12 of 13 sectors I studied, workers’ raises failed to keep up with price increases (the exception was mining; not even construction and leisure and hospitality kept pace with inflation). It is not plausible that worker bargaining power is causing price increases. Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, argues, “labor costs are dampening—not amplifying—price pressures.” In other words, workers’ rising wages have alleviated rather than exacerbated inflation.

  Here’s a little more context: since 1979, U.S. wages adjusted for inflation have stagnated compared to the rest of the G7 nations, as well as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. There has also been meager improvement for American workers in other measures such as total compensation and working conditions. The increasing automation of tasks may lead to new kinds of stress and injuries, research suggests. The Economic Policy Institute has dubbed employers’ ability to intensify the working hour and day without increasing pay as “quiet fleecing.”

  4. DOWN: Wages are not keeping pace with worker productivity. Since the Economic Policy Institute published the famous alligator graph in the 1980s, with the wide jaws of productivity going up and wages going down, workers have been giving more to the economy than they have been getting. This is the “quiet fleecing” mentioned above.

  September 14, 2022