This important economic insight has come under attack by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-wing outfit. According to their research, wages and productivity kept pace with one another up until about 1980. But, between then and 2020, wages rose by about 14 percent, while productivity escalated by roughly 60 percent.
Foundation for Economic Education
April 13, 2022
One important fact to consider is that it’s entirely possible for our economy to slow down without actually falling into a recession. In fact, it might be a good sign if the economy does exactly that: slow down. Another economist who spoke to The New York Times argued exactly this point. Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said to the publication, “We have torn back toward normal at a really fast pace, and it would be unrealistic to think that could continue.”
Katie Couric Media
April 13, 2022
“Right now we’re about 1.6 million jobs below where we were in February 2020,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She said the U.S. working-age population did grow during the pandemic.
Marketplace
April 13, 2022
“Unions also reduce racial disparities in wages and raise women’s wages, helping to counteract disparate labour market outcomes by race and gender that result from occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labour market inequities related to structural racism and sexism,” said a 2021 fact sheet from the U.S.-based Economic Policy Institute.
Toronto Star
April 13, 2022
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama, told Fortune the labor market has seen “mind-bogglingly fast and sustained growth” that is “totally unlike the Great Recession and its aftermath.”
Fortune
April 13, 2022
“We have torn back toward normal at a really fast pace, and it would be unrealistic to think that could continue,” said Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. Even slower wage growth, he said, wouldn’t worry him, as long as pay increases didn’t fall further behind inflation.
The New York Times
April 13, 2022
Heidi Sheirholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, explained in a Twitter thread that the U.S. economy is currently “on pace to recover nearly eight years faster” from the high unemployment rates created by the COVID-19 pandemic than it did from the Great Recession. This is in part due to Congress acting to provide COVID-19 relief, including the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan, Shierholz said.
Verify This
April 8, 2022
Studies show that if the overall unemployment rate drops low enough, “even those gaps start to erode a little bit,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
April 8, 2022
“When inflation is not a problem, then it’s much easier to say, ‘We’re going to maximize employment and see how far we can take this,’ ” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy. “But with inflation in the mix, they’re in a position now where they can’t really ignore that.”
Associated Press
April 1, 2022
“Overall employment is now just 1% from its pre-pandemic level,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tweeted. “Private-sector jobs record strong gains rising 426,000 in March with notable jobs added in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and retail trade. Public-sector employment still slow to return.”
U.S. News & World Report
April 1, 2022
Harris was former acting and deputy labor secretary during the Obama administration, and in a 2015 paper on the gig economy, he called for a new “independent worker” classification for on-demand app workers. These “independent workers” wouldn’t be independent contractors or employees, and would qualify for collective bargaining rights but not hours-based benefits, including overtime or minimum wages—a proposal that drew criticism from the AFL-CIO and the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg Law
April 1, 2022
But few observers would dispute the assessment of Celine McNicholas, a former NLRB special counsel who is now the general counsel and director of policy and government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute, who tells me, “Installing Jennifer Abruzzo as the NLRB’s general counsel will be the most impactful action that the Biden administration took in its first term for working people.”
American Prospect
April 1, 2022
In such private tribunals, workers win far less often and the median damages awarded are just $36,500, compared with $86,000 in state courts and $176,000 in federal court, an Economic Policy Institute analysis found.
American Prospect
April 1, 2022
A 2020 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found only a few employers have spent more than $1 million on anti-union consultants, and it’s typically taken several years to rack up such a bill. Any spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars is on the high end. None of the companies in EPI’s analysis came close to spending as much as Amazon in such a short period of time.
Huffpost
April 1, 2022
But some think that a punitive tax on windfall taxes could be effective in reducing big price hikes. “If you had excess profits tax, firms would say, ‘I could raise prices a ton, but those profits will be taxed away, so I’ll just keep prices low,’” economist Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute said.
Fiscal Times
April 1, 2022
Black workers saw the greatest percentage-point drop in unemployment rates, falling from 6.6% in February to 6.2% in March.
“Those series tend to be volatile, so you have to kind of look at it over a longer period of time. In the last three months, there has been a consistent decline in the Black unemployment rate, and the labor force participation rate has been fairly stable,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.
“That does point to things moving in the right direction,” Wilson added.
CNBC
April 1, 2022
Over the past year, wage growth has actually been historic, but that’s because the labor shortage is forcing companies to attract employees back to work. It was historically slow between 1979 and 2017, however, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Business Insider
April 1, 2022
Even before the pandemic, the cost of child care in New York had soared: The average cost of child care is $15,394, more than both the cost of in-state college tuition and average rent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
19th News
April 1, 2022
It’s true that, controlled for levels of education and years of experience, teachers make less money on the dollar than their peers in comparable fields, a concept known as the wage penalty. The Economic Policy Institute has been tracking this for years and found, most recently in 2019, that public school teachers nationally make about 19 percent less than employees in commensurate professions, or about 81 cents on the dollar. The trend has been getting worse over time; the wage penalty for teachers in 1996 was 6 percent.
Mother Jones
April 1, 2022
“They are paying our graduate graduate workers less than a living wage and in some cases, a third of what is the living wage in Erie county, which, according to the Economic Policy Institute, is about $35,000,” said Mullen. “At UB, we have a food bank, and last semester, fall 2021, 80% of the people who used that food bank were graduate students.”
The Guardian
April 1, 2022
The composition of executive pay has undergone significant change over the last 50 years, with stock options and awards now representing a bulk of executive pay at many companies. Analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank, shows that stock awards have risen to about 50% of all CEO compensation.
CNBC
April 1, 2022
“The great reshuffling continues in February as workers quit their jobs in search of better opportunities,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. For now, hiring continues to outpace quits in every major industry.
Fortune
April 1, 2022
“The hires and quits rates have been moving in the same general direction for months. They both ticked up slightly in February. Workers continue to quit and get hired at fast rates in today’s economy,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in a Tuesday analysis.
The Hill
April 1, 2022
During the first year of the pandemic, CEO pay jumped 19% — even as many of their businesses ground to a halt, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNN Business
April 1, 2022
The Economic Policy Institute has also found that “consumers obtain relief regarding their claims in only 9 percent of disputes. On the other hand, when companies make claims or counterclaims, arbitrators grant them relief 93 percent of the time—meaning they order the consumer to pay.”
The Regulatory Review
April 1, 2022
New York is not a right-to-work state, and Amazon is attempting to use that to its advantage. The company is telling workers it could fire them should they unionize but fail to pay union dues. But that requirement is not an across-the board mandate for non-right-to-work states and is something that is negotiated during union contracts, said Jennifer Sherer, senior state policy coordinator at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
April 1, 2022
And even where younger women have reached parity, it doesn’t last. “The gender wage gap grows as workers age,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
April 1, 2022
As the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out, nearly a third of state and local government workers are paid less than $20 an hour, and more than 15% of them are paid less than $15 an hour. These low wages impact workers who were considered “essential” during the pandemic and include child care workers and home care providers, workers in cleaning and maintenance occupations, office and administrative support workers, teaching assistants and more.
AFSCME
April 1, 2022
“This is the one tax that may be salient enough for corporations to change their pricing behavior,” said Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “If you had excess profits tax, firms would say, ‘I could raise prices a ton, but those profits will be taxed away, so I’ll just keep prices low.’ ”
The Washington Post
April 1, 2022