Media clips
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The inquiry comes at a time when there’s been growing scrutiny by local labor enforcers over how workers are being treated by companies. A report this week from the Economic Policy Institute’s Terri Gerstein found a growing number of district attorneys and attorneys general are taking on employers over issues ranging from worker misclassification to wage theft. Meanwhile, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are fighting harder than ever to solidify a business model that does not require them to classify certain workers as employees.
CNN Business May 28, 2021 -
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that “somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to noncompetes,” which means anywhere from 36 million to 60 million American workers have signed a noncompete agreement in their current job.
Business Insider May 28, 2021 -
I’m just looking at a study from the Economic Policy Institute this morning shows CEO compensation went up nearly 16% last year. But the average guy only went up 1.8 %. It has a lot to do with the stock packages but it permeates throughout.
WGN News May 28, 2021 -
In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the Constitution, it is a requirement to correct past injustices.
The Laverne Cox Show May 28, 2021 -
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline May 28, 2021 -
CEO pay skyrocketed 15.9% through the pandemic as the rallying stock market boosted compensation packages, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a Thursday blog post. That marks an acceleration from the 14% jump seen in 2019 despite COVID-19 roiling the global economy. EPI cited 281 filings from large firms in its preliminary report.
Conversely, annual compensation for the average American worker rose just 1.8% in 2020. The widening pay gap is captured in EPI’s CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, which rose to 307.3 last year from 276.2 among early reporting companies.
To be sure, CEO salaries broadly shrank through the year. The average salary for chief executives fell 5.2% as businesses paused pay hikes during the health crisis, according to EPI.
Yet a broader measure shows the stock market’s meteoric rise through 2020 more than made up for the slump. Realized direct compensation — which includes salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, stock options, vested stock awards — rallied last year as stocks rebounded from their pandemic lows. Among the 281 early reporting firms analyzed, realized compensation rose to $21.4 billion from $18.5 billion throughout 2020.
Business Insider May 28, 2021 -
May 28, 2021
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The US’ 10% tariff on aluminum imports from most countries accomplished its stated purpose of protecting the at-risk domestic aluminum industry in the interest of national security, market analysts and participants said May 26 after the release of a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
EPI Senior Economist Robert Scott said the tariff, imposed by former President Donald Trump under Section 232 in 2018, came at a time when the US primary aluminum industry was “hanging on by a thread.”
“The industry was threatened with collapse, and the US had the only existing high-quality, high-purity aluminum smelter that was running in the NATO countries,” Scott said in a virtual panel discussing the EPI’s May 25 report on the tariff’s impact.
“This was critical for national defense that we not lose this capacity as well as maintain the capacity to produce our own aluminum for the supply chains, and I think the COVID-19 crisis has shown just how important it is to be self-sufficient in these primary commodities.”
The EPI report concluded that the aluminum tariffs succeeded in fulfilling their intended effect and have allowed aluminum manufacturers throughout the supply chain to thrive.
S&P Global May 27, 2021 -
“Absolutely, we’re still in a crisis,” Elise Gould said.
Elise Gould is a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan Think Tank in DC.
“9 to 11 million more people don’t have a job that would’ve had a job. We’re on a very different trajectory,” Gould said. “That means, they do not have wages to be paying their bill. They do not have income. Many people are struggling –it’s very difficult for many people out there today.”
WSMV News 4 May 27, 2021 -
HEIDI SHIERHOLZ
Senior economist and director of policy, Economic Policy Institute; former chief economist, U.S. Department of LaborFifteen dollars an hour is an appropriate level for the minimum wage right now. We’re not going to suddenly go to $15 during the pandemic. The increase will gradually be phased in. Given inflation expectations over the next four years, $15 in 2025 would be about $13.79 in today’s dollars.
When people picture paying a higher minimum wage, they see it as if they were the only business raising wages. That is the beauty of an across-the-board labor standard. Everyone will need to raise wages, so no business will be at a competitive disadvantage.
After adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage is 31.5 percent less than it was in 1968. During that time, productivity growth has more than doubled. So, as an economy, we can afford this.
Inc. May 27, 2021 -
Although the tariffs were a hallmark of Trump’s trade policy, Biden would have some political cover if he decides to leave them in place.
“Four years ago, the U.S. primary aluminum industry was hanging on by a thread,” a report Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said, noting that aluminum production increased 37.6 percent after Trump’s tariffs went into effect.
The report argues that higher prices have had no meaningful effect on consumer prices or other industries.
The Hill May 27, 2021 -
The reason why this is not worrisome is that prices are basically rebounding from a deeply depressed base in the pit of the COVID recession a year ago. In March 2020, before the recession hit, core inflation was running at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent, or well below the Fed’s target rate.
As EPI’s Josh Bivens puts it:
Even several years of inflation above 2% would still not make up for years of too-slow price growth over the past 12 years, and making up for these years of too-slow price growth would go a long way toward reestablishing the credibility of the Federal Reserve inflation target. This is an opportunity, not a threat.
The American Prospect May 25, 2021 -
A 2019 Brookings study calculated that median earnings in metro Atlanta were $18.12 an hour. But about one-fifth of workers made $10.09 an hour or less, below the roughly $12.74-an-hour wage that sets the poverty line for a family of four.
“It does give people a little wiggle room not to take a job that has really low wages and is not safe,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, and now senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Atlanta Journal Constitution May 24, 2021 -
The inquiry comes at a time when there’s been growing scrutiny by local labor enforcers over how workers are being treated by companies. A report this week from the Economic Policy Institute’s Terri Gerstein found a growing number of district attorneys and attorneys general are taking on employers over issues ranging from worker misclassification to wage theft. Meanwhile, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are fighting harder than ever to solidify a business model that does not require them to classify certain workers as employees.
CNN Business May 24, 2021 -
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that “somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to noncompetes,” which means anywhere from 36 million to 60 million American workers have signed a noncompete agreement in their current job.
Business Insider May 24, 2021 -
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline May 24, 2021 -
In April, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home, said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.
Shierholz added that unemployment benefits are designed to give workers the time to find jobs that are better suited to their abilities.
“We want people well-matched to their skills and experience,” she said. “That’s what helps the economy run better.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution May 21, 2021 -
Republicans have blamed the perceived labor shortages on unemployment benefits, despite economists dismissing the benefits as a driving factor, with data showing labor shortages are confined to the leisure and hospitality sector and show no signs of spilling over to other industries or reducing growth within the leisure and hospitality sector, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian May 21, 2021 -
CEO compensation soared around 1,200% from 1978 to 2019, far outpacing stock market returns (the S&P 500 Index of large US stocks rallied 740% during that span) and the take home pay for workers, which increased by about 14%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Soaring CEO pay spills into the pay for other executives, resulting in inflated paychecks for a handful of people at the top of the corporate pyramid that doesn’t trickle down to lower-ranked workers, said Lawrence Mishel, distinguished fellow at EPI. This kind of unbalanced renumeration also seeps into the nonprofit sector and universities.
“Executive pay has been the single largest driver of excessive income growth at the very top,” Mishel said. CEOs in particular make six times as much as the top 0.1% of wage earners.
It wasn’t always this way. For the largest public companies, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 320-to-1 in 2019, but the ratio was more like 61-to-1 in 1989 and was 21-to-1 in 1965.
Quartz May 21, 2021 -
While the business groups believe the extra federal jobless benefit is discouraging some people from taking jobs, government surveys also show people are reluctant to look for work because they fear contracting COVID-19. In addition, other groups say many women have dropped out of the workforce to care for children and some people are searching for higher paying jobs with benefits.
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argued in a recent commentary that policymakers shouldn’t rein in the unemployment benefits.
“Cutting pandemic (unemployment) benefits now, as some states have done or are considering, will not just hurt workers who are depending on federal benefits while they cannot find work or are unable to work, it will also drag on the economy, as those benefits are supporting spending,” the organization said in the post.
Associated Press May 21, 2021 -
The nonpartisan, left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a blog post last week that some labor shortages have occurred for hospitality and leisure businesses, where wages are typically low, but that they shouldn’t spill into other industries. Furthermore, it said, cutting off the extra benefits could hurt the economy, adding that goal shouldn’t be to “chase” as many adults into jobs as possible but “to provide good options and economic security for all.”
The Associated Press May 21, 2021 -
A growing number of prosecutors around the nation are beginning to treat wage theft and other offenses by employers as a criminal matter, instead of relegating enforcement to civil suits and regulatory agencies.
The law-enforcement system is very effective at pressing charges “if someone were to steal an individual’s cell phone, Michael Dougherty, district attorney of Colorado’s Boulder County, said during an online seminar organized by the Economic Policy Institute May 18. “Wage theft has a far greater effect on the individual.”
Labor Press May 21, 2021 -
If Colorado’s discoveries are any indication of a national trend, wage theft, especially from low-wage workers of color, is much more pervasive than people realize—and, increasingly, local District Attorneys and state Attorneys General are stepping up enforcement against such corporate thieves.
So says Michael Dougherty, DA for Boulder, Colo., and one of four DAs from around the U.S. whom the Economic Policy Institute convened on May 17 to discuss the issue and a new EPI report on its extent. They also discussed increasing enforcement measures in their areas.
People’s World May 21, 2021 -
To understand what’s actually going on in the economy and discuss why a restaurant labor shortage could be welcome news for workers, I spoke with Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy and a senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. Before rejoining EPI in 2017, Shierholz served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor.
Mother Jones May 21, 2021 -
Northwest Indiana is the largest steel-producing region in the United States, and supporters of the industry say keeping the 2018 steel tariffs in place will be critical for post-pandemic recovery.
A report from the Economic Policy Institute outlined how a 25% tariff on steel imports under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act has provided relief to steel-producers facing prices undercut by foreign imports.
Public News Service May 21, 2021 -
Another recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, a national think tank, found low-wage workers in the 10 most populous states, including California, reported losing an average of $3,300 in wages per year due to wage theft and other crimes committed against workers by their employers. The report argues that criminal action brought by district attorneys or other prosecutors would likely deter wage theft and other similar crimes. There’s no reason to believe the violations have abated since the national study was conducted in 2008. The Center on Policy Initiatives interviewed hundreds of workers in 2017 and found that formal complaints are rare and typically only happen when the theft rises to an egregious level.
Voice of San Diego May 21, 2021 -
San Diego Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s office is calling attention to a new report published by the Economic Policy Institute, which “sheds light on the need for district attorneys and other public prosecutors to bring forward cases involving wage theft and other employer-committed crimes against workers,” according to her office.
“We need to actually enforce labor laws in this country and address the crimes committed against ordinary workers every single day with the urgency it deserves,” Gonzalez said in a statement.
The report found that minimum wage violations in the 10 most populous states, including California, affected approximately 2.4 million low-income employees, who lost an average of $3,300 a year, or nearly a quarter of their earned wages.
Sacramento Bee May 21, 2021 -
State and local prosecutors across the United States are increasingly bringing criminal charges against employers who violate their workers’ rights by stealing wages or providing unsafe work environments, says a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive, Washington DC-based think-tank.
“This is happening now in large part because worker organisations – like unions and advocacy groups – have pushed for it in many instances. This is happening now also because we have in our country a growing understanding of how extreme workplace violations have become,” Terri Gerstein, a senior fellow at EPI and the report’s author, told Al Jazeera.
Prosecutors are also reconsidering their roles and thinking of ways they could use their prosecutorial power to pursue economic and social justice by holding bosses who violate the law to account, Gerstein added.
Gerstein’s paper is the second in EPI’s New Enforcers series, which focuses on players at the state and local levels working to uphold and promote employee rights. The first report released last year, also authored by Gerstein, argued for increased state and local enforcement of workers’ rights.
Al Jazeera May 21, 2021 -
Neither a shortage of jobs, nor of people to fill them, seems to be the cause of sluggish hiring, according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, who authored the report.
“Job openings are swamped by unemployed workers,” Shierholz said, adding a true labor shortage would drive up wages in the industries where businesses were desperate for workers.
That has happened in the restaurant business and in other parts of the leisure and hospitality industry, but a wholesale wage jump across sectors isn’t in the cards just yet, Shierholz said.
San Francisco Chronicle May 21, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs for the Economic Policy Institute, said Biden needs to get the legislation through the Senate to make good on his rhetoric. She said Biden’s encouragement of Amazon workers trying to organize in Bessemer demonstrates the limits of verbal support.
“The classic example of that at this point is, the president comes out with a statement in Bessemer and the union does not prevail in the election,” said McNicholas, a former special counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. “It didn’t create a free and fair election. That would require policy reform.”
The vote broke heavily in the company’s favor. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has appealed the election to the NLRB, citing unfair labor practices. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing.
“Calling on Congress to do its job we all know is insufficient for Congress to do its job,” McNicholas said. “This administration is going to have to take an active role in championing the bill and an active role in looking for legislative mechanisms to actually get it passed, because we will not be able to pass the PRO Act and a host of other critical reforms with the 60-vote threshold.”
Roll Call May 21, 2021