Pay for top executives has skyrocketed by 1460% since 1978 according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, and more than 80% of their pay is typically stock-related.
“This escalation of CEO compensation and of executive compensation more generally has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving fewer of the gains of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%,” wrote analysts at the institute. “The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more).”
CNN Business
April 28, 2023
The average salary is roughly $4,000 more than the Economic Policy Institute considers Indiana’s minimum living wage, representing the amount needed for an adult and a child to lead “a modest yet adequate” lifestyle. The NEA also cited the institute saying Indiana teachers make 79 cents on the dollar compared to similarly educated professionals in the state.
The Center Square
April 28, 2023
In a blog post earlier this week, Josh Bivens and Samantha Sanders of the Economic Policy Institute dismissed as “laughable” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) claim that the Republican proposal “would put the United States on a path to ‘fiscal responsibility’ and lower inflation.
Common Dreams
April 28, 2023
Now some governments have been cashing in on that — while others are still sitting on billions. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that as of October, states and Washington, DC, had spent just 38% of the funds and local governments had spent about 27% of their allocations. States have until 2024 to allocate their funds, then have to spend them by 2026. If they don’t, they’ll lose the money.
Business Insider
April 28, 2023
A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that roughly half of private-sector businesses make workers sign non-competes. That translates to tens of millions of workers who are contractually prohibited from going to work for a rival company once they leave their current company. Critics say these agreements have been overused–keeping lower wage workers in fields such as fast-food, hairdressing, and house cleaning from earning a living. Critics further argue non-competes keep all wages low.
Connecticut Public Radio
April 28, 2023
As Vox pointed out when the bill passed, AB 5 meant that millions of workers, including Uber drivers, janitors, and hotel housekeepers, would receive “basic labor rights” such as “overtime pay and unemployment benefits.” Misclassification is a big problem for workers and unions alike. In California alone, a 2017 audit of 8,000 businesses found that “nearly half a million employees had been misclassified or otherwise left off payrolls,” Vox added. That severely restricts the rights a worker can expect on the job. “Most federal and state labor and employment protections are granted to employees only, not independent contractors,” explained the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in 2019.
New York Magazine
April 28, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reports the average cost of infant care in Utah is $829 per month or $9,945 annually. In some cases, parents have changed their work schedules or even quit to make ends meet.
FOX 13
April 28, 2023
Pichai’s package is 808 times larger than the median Alphabet employee pay in 2022, which was $279,802. (The year prior, without the stock award, the ratio was 21-to-1.) CEOs’ annual compensation packages have dramatically outstripped the growth of employee pay over recent decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
SF Gate
April 28, 2023
Research from the Economic Policy Institute found approximately 217,000 minimum wage earners in Ohio are victims of wage theft each year, each missing out on an average of $2,800 in underpaid salaries. Misclassifying workers has an even greater economic impact, research showed, costing the state about $180 million in income taxes.
Governing
April 28, 2023
But in a report released last month, the Economic Policy Institute argues that the decline in teenage employment is a positive development, since it largely reflects the fact that more teenagers are staying in school. Of the 16- to 19-year-olds who said they were not working in 2021, 58.1% said it was because they were in school — up 21 percentage points compared with 2001.
Pew Charitable Trust
April 28, 2023
Pay is also a big part of the problem keeping teachers. DiMauro pointed to an Economic Policy Institute study that showed weekly wages for educators had remained “relatively flat” since 1996.
Ohio Capital Journal
April 28, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute in the U.S found corporate profits were the biggest driver of inflation, rising from a 13 per cent contribution in normal times to around 33 per cent since the second quarter of 2020.
Herald Scotland
April 28, 2023
The H-2B program is not without controversy. The Economic Policy Institute, a worker advocacy research group, has argued that the program exploits migrant workers and U.S. citizens who work alongside them.
HR Dive
April 28, 2023
That’s a smokescreen. If it were so, then we wouldn’t see the rollback being pushed by lobbyists for home builders, supermarkets, restaurants and bars, or by Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-affiliated group. All those outfits have been behind the campaign for more child labor, the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute has shown.
LA Times
April 28, 2023
In some cases, companies have exploited seasonal workers, according to Daniel Costa, an immigration expert with the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “The way the visa works, the employer owns and controls the visa, they apply for it. The worker is really tied to that employer, some would say ‘indentured’ to that employer, for those six or seven months,” said Costa, who advocates for reforms to the H-2B system to improve wages and conditions for workers.
Marketplace
April 28, 2023
Also Wednesday, members of the California Federation of Teachers were at the Capitol, alongside Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, to support his bill that intends to raise teacher and other school employee salaries by 50% over the next seven years. The Democrat from Torrance cited a 2022 Economic Policy Institute report, which found that teachers earned 23.5% less than their similarly educated peers nationwide. (In California that gap shrinks to 17.6%.)
Cal Matters
April 28, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute calculated the living wage in Hawai’i to be $28.45 per hour, and by some estimates, farmers in Hawaii make $20 or less per hour. The data we have is typically for legal farm workers on farms owned by big companies and does not take into account undocumented workers who are paid far less and have less legal security.
Civil Beat
April 28, 2023
Every year, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) updates its Family Budget Calculator, an online tool that measures the income a family needs to maintain a decent standard of living in all counties and metro areas of the United States. Using this data, NEA recently determined that, on average, ESPs do not earn enough to support a family in the nation’s most affordable metro area—Brownsville, Texas.
NEA
April 28, 2023
“I’d definitely say 2011 was a step forward in how aggressively the debt ceiling was weaponized to secure partisan policy goals,” Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), previously told Vox. “I’d say 1995 was also important; [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich threatened this but didn’t take it as far as the GOP did in 2011.”
VOX
April 28, 2023
To move away from the Supreme Court for a moment, we can see this pattern of leniency for some and the stiff arm of the law for everyone else wherever we choose to look in American society. Take the workplace. A 2017 study by the Economic Policy Institute found that in the 10 most populous states, an estimated 2.4 million people lose a combined $8 billion income to unscrupulous employers. If this is representative of national trends, the institute contends, then American workers lose more than $15 billion a year to wage theft. For comparison’s sake, the total losses attributed to all property crime in 2018 amounted to $16.4 billion.
New York Times
April 20, 2023
But even in “places that have successfully, to their credit, raised minimum wages substantially over the federal level,” says Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, “they’re still in many cases not a living wage.”
CNBC
April 20, 2023
Others see a payroll tax increase as a relatively straightforward solution. “We could either raise revenues modestly, as I prefer, or we could cut benefits by about a fifth,” or even more if action is delayed, Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said at the AEI event Friday. “In my mind, this isn’t a difficult decision,” she said, because Americans “across the political spectrum oppose benefit cuts and are willing to contribute more” to preserve Social Security.
MarketWatch
April 20, 2023
The result is eye-popping inequality between the boardroom and the factory floor. According to a survey of 350 of the largest US quoted companies by the Economic Policy Institute, realised CEO pay, including proceeds from equity shares and stock options, rose 1,460 per cent from 1978 to 2021. This compares with 18 per cent growth in typical worker’s pay over the same period.
Financial Times
April 20, 2023
DeRose said that despite state law already requiring minor employees to obtain permits and parental permission to work, many employers hire children without going through those necessary steps. Minors are supposed to have work permits prior to starting employment; however, DeRose said cases of child labor violations in the state have been rising in recent years, a fact corroborated by a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute that found that child labor violations have been going up across the nation.
WTAP
April 20, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute found that a year of infant care can cost Wisconsinites more than tuition at a public college. Families have started to plan pregnancies around the availability of care, as they encounter years-long wait lists at child care centers.
NPR
April 20, 2023
Ten states launched efforts to weaken child labor protections in the last year, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Several states have already passed laws weakening or lowering restrictions. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law this March eliminating age verification and parental consent requirements for kid workers. Iowa passed a separate pro-child labor law in 2022 and is considering another bill that would allow parents to lie about their kids’ ages to get them jobs.
Gizmodo
April 20, 2023
Between 2001 and 2021, the share of 16- to 19-year-olds not working increased by 22.4 percentage points, according to an analysis of federal data by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Governing
April 20, 2023
“It’s the perfect storm of a few different developments that the pandemic has brought to bear,” says Dave Kamper, a senior policy coordinator with the Economic Policy Institute. “One is that inequality is even more obvious than it’s ever been. The CEO pay gap is higher now than it’s ever been.”
NPR
April 20, 2023
“Far too often working families are robbed of their hard-earned tax refunds by unscrupulous private tax preparers,” said David Kass, Executive Director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “Passing the Tax Refund Protection Act is a critical step in ensuring that Americans receive their full tax benefit through increased transparency and accountability from tax preparers.”
The bill is endorsed by Americans for Tax Fairness, Consumer Action, the Economic Policy Institute, and Prosperity Now.
Sen. Cory Booker
April 20, 2023