Employers have historically turned to noncompetes to reduce turnover and keep workers from fleeing to competition, as demonstrated by a study from the Economic Policy Institute that found 30% of U.S. employers had all of their employees sign noncompetes, and nearly 50% of employers had some of their employees enter noncompete agreements. Of course, for workers with intimate knowledge of trade secrets like proprietary technology or convoluted recipes, it would make sense that employers should on a case-by-case basis cement confidentiality provisions.
Fortune
January 13, 2023
But since the 1940s, the power of the labor movement and labor unions in the U.S. has been on the decline, says the Economic Policy Institute. This has allowed major companies and corporations to deploy anti-union tactics, cripple organization efforts, and skirt existing labor laws with some degree of impunity. Workers find themselves battling management for what they see as fair deals and an end to unjust practices across a range of industries, including the food and beverage sector. As National Restaurant News reports, wage theft is an acute problem in the industry, with 85% of fast food workers polled in California experiencing some form of it.
Tasting Table
January 13, 2023
Many journalists and policy analysts started paying attention to noncompetes “a few years back when it was revealed that the sub chain Jimmy John’s was forcing its sandwich makers to sign the agreements,” Jordan Weissman writes at Semafor. Jimmy John’s dropped that requirement after a lawsuit, but noncompete clauses have morphed into a “yoke for low-wage hourly workers who ordinarily have little say over terms of their employment.” In fact, “the only source of power non-unionized workers have vis-à-vis their employers is their ability to quit and take a job elsewhere,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a statement.
The Week
January 13, 2023
In Michigan, a 2019 survey by the Economic Policy Institute revealed roughly 55 percent of the state’s more than 4 million workers were subject to …(paywall).
Crain's Detroit Business
January 13, 2023
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009, when it was increased by 70 cents. That is the longest period without a raise in the history of the minimum wage. At the other end of the growth ladder, CEO pay has exploded. From 1978 to 2020, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,322%, out-gaining S&P stock market growth (817%) by a considerable margin, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In contrast, compensation of the average worker grew by just 18% during that time and the minimum wage increased 174%, from $2.65 an hour.
ecoRI News
January 13, 2023
“People often invoke the damage done by the 2011 showdown over the debt ceiling,” Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post last year. “They point to stock market losses, increases in ‘economic uncertainty’ indices, and estimates of how much higher interest rates went in the showdown’s aftermath. But they tend to miss what was by far the greatest damage done by the 2011 debt ceiling episode: the passage of the Budget Control Act (BCA), a piece of legislation that is relatively unknown to the lay public.”
Truthout
January 13, 2023
“Exorbitant CEO pay is a contributor to rising inequality that we could restrain without doing any damage to the wider economy,” Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute recently recently wrote. “CEOs are getting ever-higher pay over time because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related.”
Minnesota Reformer
January 13, 2023
Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said that not raising the debt ceiling could lead to spending cuts but making concessions to raise it could as well, based on Republicans’ demands.
The Hill
January 13, 2023
A report released by nonprofit think-tank, the Economic Policy Institute, shows that the teacher wage gap reached an all-time high in 2021. Compared to their peers in similar professions, teachers suffer from pay equity earning, on average, about 77 cents on the dollar compared to their peers in similar professions.
Black Wall Street Times
January 13, 2023
A new Economic Policy Institute report finds that teachers made 23.5 percent less than comparable college graduates in 2021. That’s the widest gap ever — despite the extraordinary challenges teachers have faced during the pandemic. The gap is even wider in some of the states with the largest teacher shortages, reaching 32 percent in Arizona, for example.
Ohio Capital Journal
January 13, 2023
Those private-sector jobs drove the quick recovery from the crash, Economic Policy Institute Senior Analyst Elise Gould said, since governments added only a net of 3,000 jobs in December and that sector’s employment is still 2.3% below pre-crash levels. State universities and colleges reported a 23,000-job drop in December.
People’s World
January 13, 2023
The outlook on teacher pay is not great in Colorado. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Colorado’s teacher pay penalty was the largest in the nation at 36% in 2021. Many people were happy to get their $750 TABOR rebate checks last year as inflation soared, but in 2019, Magellan Strategies found only 46% of voters they polled approved of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
KDVR
January 13, 2023
A few things are driving young people’s support for and participation in organized labor. First is simple economics: Many young people don’t earn enough to afford basic expenses — rent, health insurance, student loan payments — all at the same time, said Jennifer Sherer at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
January 13, 2023
“The labor market clearly remains strong,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in an interview with CNBC. “We are now seeing that the household survey and the payroll survey are showing similar signs of strength, and wage growth is looks to be coming down.”
Essence
January 13, 2023
“Studies of voucher programs in several U.S. cities, the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and in Chile and India, find limited improvements at best in student achievement and school district performance from even large-scale programs,” said a 2017 Economic Policy Institute report. The institute bills itself as an independent, nonprofit think tank.
Virginia Mercury
January 13, 2023
“As wages have grown, fewer people are working at exactly the federal minimum wage, even if many are still paid $8, $9, or $10 an hour,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Quartz. “As far as whether the minimum wage leads to better lives or fewer jobs I think the research is clear,” he added. “Minimum wage increases have not led to large job losses and instead have raised the earnings of the lowest paid workers.”
Quartz
January 13, 2023
The minimum wage hikes that took effect Jan. 1 in 23 states and Washington, D.C., will bring pay increases to an estimated 8.4 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Almost 55% of the affected workers are age 25 or older, and 45% work full time.
Benefits Pro
January 13, 2023
“A huge determinant of how well you’re going to do is how well your parents did,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “There is not a whole lot of economic mobility in this country, however you look at it.”
Fast Company
January 13, 2023
The federal minimum wage, which was last raised in 2009, stands at $7.25 an hour. When adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage last summer reached its lowest level since 1956, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found.
ABC News
January 13, 2023
Legislators of states that rely more heavily on this workforce—led by Texas, Florida, Alaska, Louisiana, and Colorado—constantly demand increases to the number of H-2B visas, including Democrats, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. For example, the program’s expansion has become a pet issue for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
Prism Reports
January 13, 2023
Piece by Josh in the American Prospect on inflation.
American Prospect
January 13, 2023
Nearly a third of private sector businesses that responded to a survey from the Economic Policy Institute require all of their employees to sign noncompetes, including a quarter of respondents that mostly employ high school graduates. “So it just is this surprisingly prevalent thing even among workers who are making very low wages,” said Heidi Shierholz with the EPI.
Marketplace
January 13, 2023
“As wages have grown, fewer people are working at exactly the federal minimum wage, even if many are still paid $8, $9, or $10 an hour,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Quartz. “As far as whether the minimum wage leads to better lives or fewer jobs I think the research is clear,” he added. “Minimum wage increases have not led to large job losses and instead have raised the earnings of the lowest paid workers.”
Quartz
January 13, 2023
Agreements are sometimes foisted upon low-wage workers, preventing them from jumping ship to a different restaurant or retail store offering higher pay. Among workplaces paying an average of less than $13 an hour, 29% have noncompetes for all workers, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
January 6, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, praised the FTC’s proposed ban on noncompetes on Twitter, where she wrote, “The only source of power nonunionized workers have vis-à-vis their employers is their ability to quit and take a job elsewhere.” Shierholz added that noncompetes aren’t necessary for the protection of companies’ intellectual property and that they “reduce wages, keep workers from finding better opportunities, and reduce the formation of new firms.”
Fox Business
January 6, 2023
Inequality in the U.S. deepened in 2021, with the country’s top 0.1% experiencing a 18.5% jump in earnings from the previous year, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
MarketWatch
January 6, 2023
In 2019, one estimate from researchers at Cornell University and the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said between one-quarter and nearly half of all private-sector workers had signed a noncompete agreement.
MarketWatch
January 6, 2023
“The labor market clearly remains strong,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “We are now seeing that the household survey and the payroll survey are showing similar signs of strength, and wage growth is looks to be coming down.”
CNBC
January 6, 2023
According to a 2019 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, somewhere between a quarter to about a half of all workers are subject to noncompete clauses.
NBC News
January 6, 2023