Media clips

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• Economic Policy Institute’s Shierholz on Jobs Report

  Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at Economic Policy Institute, discusses jobs report and the U.S. labor market. She speaks with Taylor Riggs and Guy Johnson on “Bloomberg Markets.” (Source: Bloomberg)

  Bloomberg TV August 13, 2021
• August 13
  August 13, 2021
• Kentucky already has a teacher shortage, but consistently low pay could be making it worse

  According to the National Educational Association, Kentucky ranks 42nd in the nation for starting salaries, with new teachers averaging about $37,000 per year. The overall salary for educators is a little better, at nearly $54,000 per year, but teachers are still only making 78 cents for every dollar someone with similar education and experience in a different field can make, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Salaries aren’t the only point of contention for Kentucky teachers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in Kentucky on average spend more than $400 of their own money every year to provide supplies for their students and classrooms.

  WHAS 11 August 12, 2021
• Tinder Sex Assault Case Centers on Arbitration as #MeToo Barrier

  The use of arbitration clauses in employment agreements has increased dramatically in the last 20 years, from only 2% of workers subject to forced arbitration in 1992 compared with 56% in 2018, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. The left-leaning think tank projects that this number will increase to 80% by 2024.

  Bloomberg Law August 12, 2021
• CEO Pay Now 351 Times Higher Than Average Worker

  A new report issued by the Economic Policy Institute has tracked CEO pay back to 1978 and says that the average chief executive’s pay has grown 1,322% in that time period. And while that’s certainly a long span of time — more than 40 years — the average worker’s pay has grown a mere 18 percent during that same time period.

  This means the average CEO makes $351 for every dollar the average worker does… and though a recent report in Forbes says wealth increased for the ultra-wealthy to the tune of $5 trillion during the pandemic, EPI points out that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio isn’t even the highest it’s ever been. That happened in 2000, when it was 366-to-1.

  And even if you’re at the bottom rung of this lop-sided ladder, you’re not alone: the report says that even the top .1% of workers — those just below the chief exec category — still make about 6 and a half times less, putting CEOs, according to the report’s author Lawrence Mishel, “in their own stratosphere.”

  But there’s hope. EPI says that the existing labor shortage will continue to put pressure on companies to increase wages and benefits for even their lowest paid workers and that could shift some power in the direction of the rank-and-file which is, says Mishel, “something they desperately need.”

  Manufacturing.net August 12, 2021
• One-off tax on $5.5 trillion Covid profits of world’s richest would pay for world to be vaccinated and give unemployed $20k

  An August report from progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute found that corporate boards have awarded America’s top executives compensation packages that radically outpace stock market growth and worker pay, while the nation’s federally set hourly minimum wage has remained at $7.25 for more than a decade.

  The Independent August 12, 2021
• CEO pay has soared 1,322 per cent since 1978

  These outsize compensation packages have grown faster than the stock market, and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1 per cent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  “Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with,” write authors Lawrence Mishell, a distinguished fellow, and research assistant Jori Kandra.

  “CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80 per cent) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills.”

  During the same period, the pay of the typical worker increased 18 per cent.

  The report uses a “realised” measure of CEO pay that counts stock awards when vested and stock options when cashed in, rather than when granted.

  One of the biggest jumps in executive pay was during the Covid-19 pandemic, which the authors describe as “remarkable”.

  “While millions were out of work, CEOs’ realised compensation jumped 18.9 per cent in just one year.” they write.

  “Typical worker compensation, of those who remained employed, did rise 3.9 per cent over that year – and even that wage growth is overstated: Perversely, high job loss among low-wage workers skewed the average wage higher.”

  Historically, using the realised compensation measure, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 21-to-1 in 1965, 61-to-1 in 1989, and peaked at 366-to-1 in 2000.

  In 2020 the ratio was 351-to-1. The ratio was far higher than at any point in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.

  As to how the problem of massive income inequality can be solved, the EPI recommends enacting policy solutions that would reduce incentives for CEOs to extract economic concessions and limit their ability to do so.

  “Such policies could include reinstating higher marginal income tax rates at the very top; setting corporate tax rates higher for firms that have higher ratios of CEO-to-worker compensation; use of antitrust enforcement and regulation to restrain firms’ – and by extension, CEOs’ – excessive market power; and allowing greater use of ‘say on pay’, which allows a firm’s shareholders to vote on top executives’ compensation.”

  The Independent (via Yahoo! News) August 11, 2021
• < Retail Workers Are Quitting At A Record Pace. But Stores Are Rapidly Hiring, Too

  Meanwhile, inflation is erasing the buying power of those new raises. I talked to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and she says if this was a big change that’s giving workers a new kind of long-term power, wage growth would be much higher. And she worries over time, wages might simply get frozen again while prices continue rising.

  NPR August 11, 2021
• Millennials make up the largest share of homebuyers in California. How do they do it?

  While housing costs doubled or tripled, wages didn’t. Compensation rose 17.2% since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Sacramento Bee August 11, 2021
• Wages rise in US as companies scramble for staff

  “For the first time since the late 1990s, low-wage workers have a little more leverage to demand higher pay,” said David Cooper, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive Washington think tank.

  AFP (via Yahoo! News) August 11, 2021
• CEO pay at big companies rose nearly 19% last year to $24 million, report finds

  The chief executives at major U.S. corporations received millions of dollars in bonuses or raises last year even as many companies saw slumping sales and job cuts because of the pandemic, a new analysis shows.

  CEO compensation at the top 350 companies jumped nearly 19% in 2020 to an average $24.2 million, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. By comparison, pay for rank-and-file workers last year rose roughly 4%. The typical corporate leader at big companies in 2020 made $351 for every dollar earned by a typical employee, up from a ratio of 307-to-1 in 2019, according to EPI.

  Economist Lawrence Mishel, who co-authored the report, said some companies touted reductions in pay for top executives to reflect the pandemic’s impact on business, but had little impact. “CEOs offering pay cuts during the pandemic yielded favorable headlines, but were symbolic at best and a head fake at worst,” he said in a statement.

   

  CBS August 11, 2021
• Real Time Economics Special Report: More Jobs, Higher Wages

  “There is still a big gap in the labor market, but even with some slowing from this pace of job growth, we will be back to pre-Covid health by the end of 2022—a recovery *five times* as fast as the recovery following the Great Recession.” —Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute

  Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics August 6, 2021
• Black News Channel — Prime With Charles Blow

  Research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute has highlighted that Black women working in fields deemed essential in COVID recovery including doctors and nurses earned eleven percent to twenty seven percent less than their white male counterparts.

  Black News Channel August 6, 2021
• 10 ways the PRO Act could change the game for employers and organized labor

  Advocates for eradicating right-to-work laws say they degrade the power of organizing. Right-to-work laws “starve unions,” Heidi Shierholz, witness at the hearing and senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told HR Dive. “They say that [unions] that have to represent all these workers, legally — they have to represent everybody in the bargaining unit — cannot charge for any of those services.”

  HR Dive August 6, 2021
• Anatomy of an Anti-Union Meeting

  Bargaining units were not even guaranteed to win a first contract, Schadel declared, using 2009 data from the Economic Policy Institute. Even more than three years after winning a union election, 25 percent of bargaining units fail to win a first contract, EPI reported. Then again, non-union workplaces get contracts governing their employment zero percent of the time.

  The American Prospect August 6, 2021
• Easy Ways to Show Teachers Appreciation — Straight from Teachers Themselves

  According to a 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute, “teachers are paid almost 20% less than other college-educated workers with similar experience and other characteristics.” Most teachers will tell you that it’s all worth it for their students, but a little appreciation goes a long way.

  People August 6, 2021
• What Does High Unemployment Have to Do with Your Investments?

  Average hourly earnings rose 3.6% to $30.40 in June. That’s the biggest spike since January 2009, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.

  Entrepreneur (via Yahoo) August 6, 2021
• Alabama coal miners on strike since April say they’re fighting for working Americans everywhere

  The issues the UMWA is seeing in Brookwood highlight a broader problem for unions in the U.S. By 2020, only 12.1% of workers were represented by a union — about half as many as 40 years ago — according to the Economic Policy Institute. On average, unionized workers earn about 11% more than non-unionized workers.

  “The reason that we’ve seen such a big decline in unionization, despite workers’ interests in being unionized, has everything to do with massively increased employer aggressiveness against unions,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the EPI and a former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor. “It’s not that the workers don’t want to be in unions. It’s that the playing field has been so tilted that it’s really undermined workers’ fundamental rights.”

  ABC News August 6, 2021
• Simone Biles & Naomi Osaka Help Remix What It Means To Be A Strong Black Woman

  In 2015, the Economic Policy Institute revealed that “more than two-thirds of all African American working mothers are single moms, making them the primary, if not sole, economic providers for their families” which is significantly higher than their white and Latina counterparts.

  MadameNoire (via Yahoo) August 6, 2021
• James Early on Cuban Embargo, David Cooper on ‘We All Quit’

  Also on the show: David Cooper, senior research analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, joins us to parse the “we all quit” phenomenon currently coursing through the US wage labor workforce, and through US economic news media. Does media’s narrative really match what’s going on?

   

  FAIR Counterspin August 6, 2021
• Black women make nearly $1 million less than white men during their careers

  Black women who work in areas that are critical to the Covid-19 recovery such as doctors, nurses, teachers, child care workers, wait staff, and cashiers, for example, make 11% to 27% less than white men, according data from the Economic Policy Institute.

  In higher-paid professions, including among doctors on the frontlines fighting Covid, the inequality is magnified. White male physicians and surgeons make $63.41 an hour on average. Black women in these positions make less than $46.59 an hour, EPI found.

  CNBC August 6, 2021
• The economy’s recovery from COVID is 3 times faster than the rebound from the Great Recession

  Even if job growth slows slightly from the July pace, the US is still on track to recoup its lost payrolls by the end of 2022. That would be five times faster than it took to recover every job lost during the Great Recession, Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a tweet.

  Business Insider August 6, 2021
• Unemployment rate falls for every group but is higher for Black and Hispanic workers

  The overall employment trend is moving in the right direction as the economy recovers from the pandemic, according to Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist with the Labor Department under the Obama administration.

  “Because people of color were disproportionately hit by this downturn, as we’re recovering from this, workers of color see disproportionate gains,” said Shierholz, senior economist and policy director at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  CNBC August 6, 2021
• 10 Ways Inequity Still Very Much Exists in the Workplace

  The differential between pay awarded to white males versus other workers is getting smaller in some instances, but the gap between wages paid to Caucasian men and both Black men and women has actually worsened in the past two decades, according to one report from the Economic Policy Institute.

  …

  Though some claim we’re in a “post-racial” society, the Economic Policy Institute reports Black workers still earn less than three-quarters of the pay awarded to their white colleagues—71 cents on the dollar for Black males, and 64 cents on the dollar for Black females.

  Newsweek August 6, 2021
• Map Shows Every State You Can’t Afford If You Earn Minimum Wage

  The user compared the state’s wages verse the cost of living, data compiled from MIT’s living wage calculator and the Economic Policy Institute.

  Fatherly August 6, 2021
• Is the middle class okay? Half of Americans don’t think so

  Between 1979-2019, the Economic Policy Institute found, employees have increased productivity by 72%, but their wages have only increased 17% in the last forty years.

  Fast Company August 6, 2021
• People in half the country got unemployment checks ‘unacceptably’ slowly last summer, Fed report finds

  And the Fed report says that the creation of PUA “represents another substantial achievement.” That program made up the greatest share of federal UI distributed by the end of 2020, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  Business Insider August 6, 2021
• It’s August 3, and we’re just now reaching Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

  “The fact that we are talking about this every year reflects the stubborn, structural nature of pay inequities, which is manifold,” says Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute. “Occupational segregation limits Black women’s access to higher paying occupations. But even when employed in the same occupation, pay discrimination results in lower earnings for women relative to men.”

  …

  “The lack of a national policy of paid leave means that women are more likely to take unpaid time out,” says Wilson. “The combination of factors means, on average, women start their careers with a pay gap that they are never able to close.”

  …

  Despite the fact that so many women have dropped out of the workforce (or scaled back their hours) during the pandemic, the date of Black Women’s Equal Pay Day has not been pushed back—at least not yet. Next year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day will reflect more up-to-date annual earnings data from the U.S. Census population survey, says Wilson.

  Fast Company August 6, 2021
• This Is Your Yearly Reminder That Black Women Are Still Paid 37 Percent Less Than Their White Male Counterparts

  Currently, it takes 19 months for a Black woman to earn what a white man in a comparable role made in a year—despite Black women having “the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  The Root August 6, 2021
• Wage Gap Stats You Need To Know On Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

  August 3, 2021, marks Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, and there are a lot of wage-gap statistics you need to know on this day — which highlights the amount of time Black women need to work to earn the same wages as their white male counterparts — include the troubling fact that Black women workers are paid only 68 cents on the dollar relative to white non-Hispanic men, even after controlling for education, years of experience, and location, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And, Black women must work four months longer than white women to earn the same wage. This is not equality.

  …

  “Pay inequity directly touches the lives of Black women in at least three distinct ways,” Valerie Wilson, Janelle Jones, Kayla Blado, and Elise Gould reported on the EPI blog. “Since few Black women are among the top five percent of earners in this country, they have experienced the relatively slow wage growth that characterizes growing class inequality along with the vast majority of other Americans. But in addition to this class inequality, they also experience lower pay due to gender and race bias.”

  …

  Additionally, the EPI reported that “regardless of their connection to the labor market, their level of educational attainment, or their occupation, they are paid less than their white male counterparts. The ongoing gender and racial discrimination faced by Black women means that seven months into 2017, Black women finally have equal pay with what white men earned last year.” The wage gap is not an alternative fact.

  Bustle August 6, 2021