As a report by the Economic Policy Institute demonstrates, rising CEO pay does not reflect a change in the value of skills — it represents a shift in power. Over decades, American politics has undermined the bargaining power of workers by discouraging and obstructing self-organizing efforts, such as unionization.
The Conversation
January 6, 2023
The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since July 2009. Since then, the nation’s baseline pay has lost more than one-fourth its purchasing power. When factoring in inflation, today’s minimum wage hasn’t been worth this little since the 1950s, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CBS News
January 6, 2023
Yeah, that’s right. So as opposed to many of the other measures, this one is designed to help people who already have more money set aside. And it’s part of what’s been a big push in recent years to delay those required distributions because of taxes. Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, she put it this way.
NPR
January 6, 2023
An economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that … the most vulnerable people who are employed in the economy — low-wage (paywall).
Law 360
January 6, 2023
The weekly email blast often includes a segment labeled “That’s Not a Living Wage,” in which she lists positions at regional theaters from across the U.S. that do not live up to the standards outlined by the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator, which “measures the income a family needs to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living.” Studio is just one of several local theaters that have made an appearance on Halvorsen’s list.
Washington City Paper
January 6, 2023
Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She’s the co-author of “Rescuing Retirement” and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
January 6, 2023
A 2019 analysis by the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that 36 million to 60 million workers could be subject to noncompete agreements, which the group said companies have increasingly adopted in recent years.
Associated Press
January 6, 2023
The teacher shortage isn’t unique to Kansas, and it began even before the COVID-19 pandemic. A report by the Economic Policy Institute in 2019, titled “The Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market,” pointed to impending retirements, increasing vacancies and declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs.
KMUW
January 6, 2023
“Doing something like this is a way to help sustain the increase in worker power over the last couple of years,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, who was chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration.
New York Times
January 6, 2023
These measures are likely to open significant opportunities for workers without a college degree. Some analysts have projected that the infrastructure bill alone could generate as many as 800,000 jobs annually. Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, estimated that about four-fifths of the jobs created under an earlier version of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the House would not require a college degree, and he told me he believes the distribution is roughly the same in the final package.
The Atlantic
January 6, 2023
Raising the minimum wage would not lead to as fast or drastic an improvement, but a 2019 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that increasing the amount to $15 an hour would lift more than 500,000 children from poverty. And the Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2021 that if Congress passed a $15 minimum wage increase by 2025, up to 3.7 million people wouldn’t have to live in poverty — 1.3 million of those being children.
Nebraska Examiner
January 6, 2023
Inflation is on the rise, and increasing the minimum wage can help to reduce economic inequality, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios
January 6, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that more than 8 million workers got a pay bump. That’s certainly welcome during these times of elevated inflation. Thing is, wages have been going up in this tight labor market — around 5% over the past year. So how much do hikes in the minimum wage matter?
Marketplace
January 6, 2023
As a result of the recent high inflation, minimum wage increases in states where cost of living is taken into consideration were greater than in years past, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Those include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont and Washington state.
NPR
January 6, 2023
Raising the minimum wage would not lead to as fast or drastic an improvement, but a 2019 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that increasing the amount to $15 an hour would lift more than 500,000 children from poverty. And the Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2021 that if Congress passed a $15 minimum wage increase by 2025, up to 3.7 million people wouldn’t have to live in poverty – 1.3 million of those being children.
The Miami Times
January 6, 2023
Policy Matters had the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, analyze how the latest minimum wage increase in Ohio would impact low-wage workers.
The analysis estimates that:
- 188,300 Ohioans now paid less than $10.10 will see an increase
- 278,000 workers currently paid a little more than the new minimum will likely get a raise as employers adjust pay scales.
- Two-thirds of workers benefiting from the minimum wage increase are over 20.
Signal Cleveland
January 6, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that AAPI workers have a higher unemployment rate than White workers but a lower unemployment rate than Black and Hispanic workers in the second quarter of 2022.
AsAm News
January 6, 2023
As of Jan. 1, 2023, 23 states and Washington DC have raised their minimum wage, according to the think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The hikes will affect approximately 8.4 million workers, increasing wages by more than $5 billion.
Quartz
January 6, 2023
Nearly two dozen states rang in the new year with hourly minimum wage increases, boosting paychecks for millions of U.S. workers.
The pay raises are now in effect for 8.4 million workers across 23 states, set in motion by previously passed legislation, ballot measure or as annual cost of living adjustments, according to a data analysis by the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute. Twenty-seven cities and counties also bumped up their minimum wages on Jan. 1, and four more states are hiking minimum wages later this year, adding to the number of Americans expected to see higher earnings.
Money Magazine
January 6, 2023
A new Economic Policy Institute report reaffirms that the post-pandemic teacher shortage is both widespread and severe in schools serving students of color or from low-income families. The report warns: “The shortage is not a function of an inadequate number of qualified teachers in the U.S. economy. Simply, there are too few qualified teachers willing to work at current compensation levels given the increasingly stressful environment facing teachers.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
January 6, 2023
By January 1, hourly minimum wages in 23 states will rise as part of previously scheduled efforts to reach $15 an hour or to account for cost-of-living changes. The increases account for more than $5 billion in pay boosts for an estimated 8.4 million workers, the Economic Policy Institute estimates.
Additionally, nearly 30 cities and counties across the US will increase their minimum wage, according to the EPI, a left-leaning think tank.
“The fact that there’s high inflation really just underscores how necessary these minimum wage increases are for workers,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, a research assistant at the EPI. “Even before the pandemic, there was no county in the United States where you could affordably live as a single adult at $15 an hour.”
CNN Business
January 6, 2023
The pay increases affect about 8.4 million workers, who will gain a combined $5 billion over the course of 2023, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found.
After the wave of wage hikes, Washington became the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $15.74 per hour. Meanwhile, workers in Massachusetts and the New York City area saw their minimum base pay rise to $15 per hour.
ABC News
January 6, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2018 that more than 9 million workers who are statutorily excluded from overtime protections, such as teachers and registered nurses, are excluded from the pumping protections.
Bloomberg Law
January 6, 2023
Education has long been considered a calling, but that doesn’t mean teachers and staff won’t leave if they are substantially underpaid. An analysis this month from the Economic Policy Institute spells out how teachers in the early 1990s were, on average, paid about 5 percent less than college graduates in other professions. Today, they are paid close to 25 percent less. There is no shortage of people who want to work in education, the report concludes, but there’s a scarcity of qualified teachers who are “willing to work at current wages and under current working conditions.”
The Washington Post
January 6, 2023
An estimated 3.2 million Californians — 18.9% of the workforce — are getting raises, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
LA Times
January 6, 2023
“The big ugly fact out there is that since modern recorded history, only about half of workers have ever had a retirement plan,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, referring to savings vehicles like 401(k)s. “More than half of workers either have little or nothing.”
NPR
January 6, 2023
Not only do right-to-work laws undermine unions, they also hurt workers’ wages. The Economic Policy Institute found that workers in right-to-work states earn 3.1 percent less than comparable workers in states without such laws, after adjusting for differences in the cost of living. That means a worker’s pay is on average around $1,600 less per year.
The New Republic
January 6, 2023
In 2021, housekeepers made an average hourly wage of $14.22 per hour, while home health aides made $14.07 per hour, according to the Department of Labor. Childcare workers made an average of $13.31 per hour. Domestic workers are three times as likely to be living in poverty as other workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Fast Company
January 6, 2023
In 2017, the FBI reported the cost of street crime at about $13.8 billion, the same year that the Economic Policy Institute released a study saying that just one form of wage theft — minimum wage violations — costs U.S. workers even more: an estimated $15 billion annually, impacting an estimated 17% of low-wage workers.
The American Prospect
January 6, 2023
Margaret Poydock, a policy analyst with the Economic Policy Institute who studies the labor movement, said the increased interest in workers’ rights from Gen Z workers stems in part from the time they’ve grown up. The pandemic, for example, put added stress on so-called “essential workers” or frontline workers in the retail industry at grocery stores, restaurants and shops.
Modern Retail
January 6, 2023