According to the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, at least 30 states have introduced or passed bills to weaken child labor protections since 2021 — and in nine of those states, legislation has been introduced to expand youth employment in hazardous occupations or workplaces.
In this year alone, 11 states have introduced or taken new action on bills to roll back child labor protections in 2024, according to EPI.
ABC News
February 23, 2024
Games also make learning more accessible. According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost two-thirds of the workforce does not have a college degree, and “the last thing an hourly worker wants is to be put in a classroom and feel they’re being taught at,” said Caucci.
C-Store Dive
February 23, 2024
Modern Healthcare
February 23, 2024
Earlier this month the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argued that the recent proposals targeting state child labor protections are part of “an intentional tactic to generate pressure for subsequently lowering federal standards, reflecting long-standing interests of some industry groups.”
Mountain State Spotlight
February 23, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute: “Misleadingly named right-to-work (RTW) laws do not, as some unfamiliar with the term may assume, entail any guarantee of employment for people ready and willing to go to work. Rather, by making it harder for workers’ organizations to sustain themselves financially, state RTW laws aim to undermine unions’ bargaining strength. Because RTW laws lower wages and benefits, weaken workplace protections, and decrease the likelihood that employers will be required to negotiate with their employees, they are advanced as a strategy for attracting new businesses to a state. But EPI research shows that RTW laws do not have any positive impact on job growth.”
Indeed, the institute noted several years ago, “RTW laws are associated with lower wages and benefits for both union and nonunion workers. In a RTW state, the average worker makes 3.2 percent less than a similar worker in a non-RTW state.”
Capital Times
February 23, 2024
Unemployment benefits for striking workers: Labor unions want the state to extend unemployment benefits for striking workers, which would give unions a significant advantage in protracted work stoppages. New York and New Jersey already allow striking workers to apply for unemployment, with more than half a dozen other states also considering it, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Minnesota Reformer
February 23, 2024
The reimbursement rate increases come at a time when Massachusetts remains one of the most expensive states when it comes to childcare.
The Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank specializing in economic research, found the average annual cost of infant care in the Bay State is nearly $21,000.
WAMC Northeast Public Radio
February 23, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, calls this difference the “teacher pay penalty.” EPI calculated that, in 2022, teachers earned only 74 cents on the dollar compared with comparably educated professionals. The right-leaning Hoover Institution reached a similar conclusion in its 2020 report on educator compensation, showing that, even adjusting for factors such as talent and experience, “teachers are paid 22 percent less than they would be if they were in jobs in the U.S. economy outside of teaching.”
The Washington Post
February 23, 2024
A 2022 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that average weekly wagers for teachers have remained “relatively flat” since 1996, with teachers making more than 14% less in Ohio when compared with other college-educated workers.
The 74
February 23, 2024
Nebraska’s unemployment rate ranks among the nation’s lowest, with the statewide rate at 2.3% for the last three months of 2023. But estimates from the Economic Policy Institute show unemployment among Black workers in Nebraska at 3.5% during the same period and Latino unemployment at 3%.
Omaha World-Herald
February 23, 2024
Generally, employers can get away with paying lower wages in states without strong unions: According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on low- and middle-income workers, unionization rates in Michigan declined faster than unionization rates nationally after that state passed right-to-work laws in 2012; wages, which had been higher than the national median, fell below it. (That legislation was repealed in 2023, making Michigan the first state in more than half a century to repeal its right-to-work-law.)
Cost of Living Project
February 23, 2024
Reprint of Daniel Costa and Heidi Shierholz blog, “Immigrants are not hurting U.S.-born workers.”
In These Times
February 23, 2024
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows Georgia joins nearly three dozen other states where childcare is now more expensive than some college tuitions. According to their numbers, parents in the peach state spend an average of $8,530 dollars a year on childcare per child. That comes out to more than $700 per month. The Economic Policy Institute says it now costs $1,324 a year more for daycare in Georgia than the average in-state tuition for a four-year public college.
13 WMAZ
February 23, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator measured the income a family needs to have a “modest yet adequate” standard of living. According to its measurements, to achieve that in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, you need to make an annual total of $112,609.
Bucks County Today
February 23, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the number of bus drivers in the country is down 15% from 2019.
KWQC
February 23, 2024
Support has grown across the United States recently for legislation banning race-based discrimination on hair, specifically textures or styles associated with a particular race or national origin. Texas is one of 24 states to have passed a law banning such discrimination, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Texas passed its law in May 2023.
Reuters
February 23, 2024
It also took into account the average monthly cost of rent via Zumper and the average cost of groceries via data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Travel and Leisure
February 16, 2024
- The Economic Policy Institute issued a report showing that so-called “right to work” laws which make it harder for workers to unionize are hurting the economic power of workers in red states, resulting in lower wages, smaller pensions, and worse benefit packages. Additionally, the trickle-down claims that eliminating right-to-work laws will create jobs are patently false:
The Pitch from Civic Ventures
February 16, 2024
A 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft costs U.S. workers more than $50 billion each year.
Orlando Weekly
February 16, 2024
Thirty-four states also have minimum wage exemptions for youth, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Next City
February 16, 2024
A 2022 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that average weekly wagers for teachers have remained “relatively flat” since 1996, with teachers making more than 14% less in Ohio when compared with other college-educated workers.
News 5 Cleveland
February 16, 2024
Opponents say such laws weaken unions’ ability to secure better wages, benefits and working conditions for workers. According to an analysis by the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, wages in “right-to-work” states are more than 3% lower than in non-“right-to-work” states, “even after controlling for a full set of worker characteristics and state labor market conditions.”
Construction Dive
February 16, 2024
“I’m not particularly concerned,” says Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
If economists aren’t panicked, it means you probably shouldn’t be either. Unless, of course, you’re in one of the sectors that’s seen an uptick.
NerdWallet
February 16, 2024
The budgets estimate community-specific costs for 10 family types (one or two adults with zero to four children) in all counties and metro areas in the United States. Officials say, compared with the federal poverty line and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, EPI’s family budgets provide a more accurate and complete measure of economic security in America.
WJON (Minnesota)
February 16, 2024
Conversely, they make up just 10.5% of computer and mathematical science occupations, according to the Economic Policy Institute, where the median annual salary is $100,440, and 6.9% of legal occupations, where the median annual salary is $95,170.
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And even if public transportation gets you to that job, you “may be limited in the number of hours of work because [you] can’t use transportation at any time,” says Valerie Wilson, director of the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy.
CNBC
February 16, 2024
A report by the Economic Policy Institute found that “14% of surveyed gig workers [in May 2020] earned less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.”
Popular Information
February 16, 2024
The decision to repeal its right-to-work laws may have a positive economic effect—at least, that’s what a brief released this week from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows.
The report says that states with RTW laws “have lower unionization rates, wages, and benefits compared with non-RTW states,” and that “on average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.”
Fast Company
February 16, 2024
States have outlawed hair discrimination through legislation and executive order, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
HR Dive
February 16, 2024
What’s more, unfairness goes well beyond hiring decisions. For decades the received wisdom was that black Americans would pull closer to white Americans if they had similar academic qualifications. But Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank based in Washington, dc, has shown that wages for black and white college graduates have instead drifted further apart in recent decades. “In addition to pay discrimination, a lot has to do with disparities in the jobs that people go into and in opportunities for promotion,” says Ms Wilson.
The Economist
February 16, 2024