Regulators have so far been unwilling to fight powerful tech giants over worker classification, said Celine McNicholas, counsel at the Economic Policy Institute. She said gig companies should already be treating their drivers as employees, but have “decided they are unwilling to comply with the law.”
“That is the business model that they have employed out of the gate, and they have gotten away with it,” she added. “There hasn’t been federal enforcement. Where is the DOL lawsuit against these companies? That is how change is made in big companies that are skirting regulations or violating the law.”
Bloomberg Law
July 21, 2023
By breaking down the price increases into their three main components — labor cost, nonlabor inputs and profit markup — the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provides much better evidence for how inflation came about during the pandemic. The EPI study looks at these three components from 2007 to 2019 and from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021 across Non-Financial Sector industries (NFC), which form 75% of the entire private sector. The study shows that from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%. It shows an acceleration of over 1.8% price growth compared with the 2007-2019 pre-pandemic business cycle.
Ventura County Star
July 21, 2023
In 2021, the top 10% of Americans held nearly 70% of US wealth, up from about 61% at the end of 1989, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The top 1% of earners in the United States now takes home 21% of all the income in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
That means a top-ranked university can charge whatever it wants and will still find wealthy families willing and able to pay each year.
CNN Business
July 21, 2023
Like many older Americans, they keep working because they can’t afford to quit. An April report by the Economic Policy Institute summed it up like this:
“No Way Out: Older workers are increasingly trapped in crummy jobs and unable to retire.”
Labor economist and New School professor Teresa Ghilarducci, co-author of that report, told me that as housing and other living costs have risen in the post-pension era, it’s tougher for workers, let alone retirees, to pay their bills. And that financial fragility is far more prevalent among Black and Latino people.
LA Times
July 21, 2023
CEOs earned 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021, the Economic Policy Institute reported in October.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 21, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute published data that suggests these aberrations to employees’ scheduled times aren’t just inconvenient for workers, but that they may just lead to higher levels of burnout, stress, and at-home strife.
“Employees who work irregular shift times, in contrast with those with more standard, regular shift times, experience greater work-family conflict, and sometimes experience greater work stress,” the article states.
The Daily Dot
July 21, 2023
Public educators have long complained about stagnant wages. Adjusted for inflation, teachers’ average weekly pay has increased by only $29 between 1996 and 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The wage problem has contributed to a public-school teacher shortage in some parts of the country.
The Wall Street Journal
July 21, 2023
The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.
Huffpost
July 21, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reports the number of workers involved in major strikes increased by nearly 50% last year, and that doesn’t include smaller-scale work stoppages.
NBC Boston
July 21, 2023
Refers to EPI research on child labor.
The Nation
July 14, 2023
Cites EPI report on child labor.
CBS News
July 14, 2023
The federal government has vowed to crack down on violations of child labor laws, but the Economic Policy Institute, which examines the economic impact of government policies, reports that in the last two years, at least fourteen states have either passed or introduced measures to weaken the laws protecting children from dangerous working conditions.
They permit longer work hours and more dangerous work, lower the ages for work around alcohol, or introduce new subminimum wages for children.
Milwaukee Independent
July 14, 2023
Americans have long struggled to save enough for retirement, which remains a problem today. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average working household has just $95,776 saved for their golden years.
Motley Fool
July 14, 2023
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute – a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank – reports that 14 states have introduced bills weakening child labor standards in the past two years and five state have passed them: Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and New Jersey.
“We’re seeing teens … hired into highly exploitative work that involves excessive hours, illegal exposure to either hazards or chemicals,” EPI’s Jennifer Sherer told NBC Nightly News last month.
The EPI-noted states have enacted laws extending the hours 14- and 15-year-olds can work. Bills have proposed paying young workers below a state’s minimum wage and allowing them to do more hazardous jobs.
The Journal Record (Oklahoma)
July 14, 2023
At the same time, corporate boards like Walmart’s are approving executive benefits that have grown exponentially in comparison to worker pay — in fact, the Economic Policy Institute released a report stating that CEO pay has increased by 1,460% since 1978, while worker pay has increased by just 18.1%.
CNN
July 14, 2023
The Rescue Plan also provided child tax credits to families. A 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute determined that those subsidies had helped to reduce the U.S. poverty rate to a historic low in 2021. Those credits expired at the end of that year, and an attempt to include the credits in the 2022 federal spending bill passed by Congress failed.
The American Independent
July 14, 2023
“Energy prices have definitely come down a lot in absolute terms over the past year,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens told Vox. “Grocery prices have fallen in absolute terms — i.e., not just slower inflation, actual price declines — since March.” Bivens cautioned that it’s not certain that these prices will keep dropping.
VOX
July 14, 2023
Long-term effects and inevitable unintended consequences of this approach may be less clear but Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, describes the combined impact as “transformational”.
“The investment in infrastructure will create a lot of jobs directly, a lot of economic dynamism and productivity and bring new technologies and efficiencies to infrastructure,” he says. “The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest investment in renewable energy and electric vehicles. People love it, people hate it. But this will be the US approach to meeting our Paris Agreement commitments.
“And historically, construction and manufacturing industries are highly interest rate sensitive, but they have not been sensitive to the last rate hikes because these policy supports are there, and the benefits are spreading out to other industries and jobs.”
Australian Financial Review
July 14, 2023
“A 2.2% real wage growth is just really good, excellent performance,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “If you do that for a number of years, you end up with much higher living standards.”
NBC News
July 14, 2023
According to a report from The Economic Policy Institute, for over 25 years, the average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat when adjusted for inflation. Since 1996, weekly pay for teachers has increased by only $29, while other college graduates’ salary has increased by $445 per week over that same time period.
CBS News Baltimore
July 14, 2023
Bill has also worked at the Economic Policy Institute and served as the executive director of the National Urban League’s Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
Legacy.com
July 14, 2023
Meanwhile, legislators in at least 14 states over the past two years – including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin – have pushed to ease child labor regulations, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Some proposals have been enacted: In March, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation removing requirements for age verification and work certificates for employees under the age of 16.
U.S. News & World Report
July 14, 2023
According to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, “paid sick leave guarantees are seen by many public health experts as one of the strongest tools in stopping the spread of infectious diseases,” while the Economic Policy Institute finds that low-wage workers are particularly susceptible to having limited paid sick leave.
CalMatters
July 14, 2023
In response, states and localities across the U.S. are raising minimum wages this summer, many on an incremental route to a $15 minimum. Experts say even the gradual changes are especially important now in the midst of high inflation. But they warn that more states need to follow, and point to loopholes in the policies, often affecting the most vulnerable workers, that must be tightened.
Connecticut kicked off a summer of increases in June, lifting its minimum wage by $1 to $15. This month, Washington D.C. increased its wage by $0.90, to $17. Oregon and Nevada raised theirs by $0.70 and $0.75, respectively, to $14.20 and $11.25.
[Paywall].
Fast Company
July 14, 2023
There may be some room for compromise on the issue, however, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. While EPI opposes keeping the sub-minimum pay, Shierholz said the phase-in period for the tipped rate to match the minimum wage could be lengthened instead of having the two minimum pay thresholds match within seven years, like in the previous proposal.
“I’m completely fine with just taking time to do it,” she said. “But it should be done.”
Bloomberg Law
July 14, 2023
And while concern about rapid wage growth drove the Fed’s rate hikes, it’s not clear that higher wages are leading to markedly better living conditions for some Americans. Post-COVID-19 wages have been growing, but mostly from the bottom. Real wage growth for low-wage workers from 2019 to 2022 was 9 percent, according to an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which means it’s grown faster than inflation. That was partly driven by a high quit rate: The tight labor market meant that employees could leave jobs that weren’t satisfying or well-paying enough for better jobs. That often meant leaving low-paying service sector jobs, like in restaurants, and service sector employers had to raise their wages to lure employees back.
…
And some of the recent gains for low-wage work may be temporary. Elise Gould, a senior economist at the EPI, said that Biden-era policies were actually responsible for some of that wage growth among the lowest-earning workers. Pandemic-era programs like enhanced unemployment benefits and child tax credits gave low-income workers the cushion they needed to be able to look for new jobs with higher wages, she said. But much of that assistance is gone or is drying up, and the gains could disappear. “There’s nothing that we have right now, in terms of labor standards … that’s going to lock in the wage gains that we have,” she said.
FiveThirtyEight
July 14, 2023
Fourteen states across the country – including Wisconsin – have introduced proposals to roll back child labor protections.
“The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
July 14, 2023
According to a 2022 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), domestic workers face a 25 percent pay gap: “The average domestic worker is paid 75 cents for every dollar that a similar worker would make in another occupation.”
The study identified 2.2 million domestic workers in 2021, though researchers wrote it is “highly likely” that figure is a significant undercount, since many workers are paid “under the table,” and a significant number are undocumented immigrants, who are generally underrepresented in surveys.
The Hill
July 14, 2023