Based on data from the Social Security Administration, the percentage of earned income subject to Social Security’s payroll tax has declined from 90% in 1983 to just 81.4% as of 2021. As noted by a recently published blog from the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the lowest level of earnings being subjected to the payroll tax in 49 years. More importantly, it’s confirmation that wage growth for high-earning workers is outpacing the near-annual increase in the maximum taxable earnings cap for Social Security’s payroll tax.
Motley Fool
January 27, 2023
A report from the Economic Policy Institute backs up her assertion. Depending on where they live, teachers in the United States earn a weekly wage that is 3.4% to 35.9% less than that of their college-educated peers. In 28 states, that figure – known as a wage penalty – exceeds 20%. Benefits somewhat offset that pay reality, but not enough to level the playing field. The report found that teachers’ total compensation penalty grew by 11.5 percentage points from 1993 to 2021.
Christian Science Monitor
January 27, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Colorado teachers earn on average about $60,000 annually. That’s about 40 percent, or $21,000, less than other college-educated professionals in the state.
Denver 7
January 27, 2023
We turn to the Economic Policy Institute for the dour details of what it means to be an independent contractor in the American labor market now. “The way a worker is classified has serious implications and costs for their labor rights and economic security. When employers misclassify workers who are employees as independent contractors, they lose the legal right to earn at least the applicable minimum wage and to be paid time-and-a-half for overtime hours.
Counter Punch
January 27, 2023
Economic analyst David Cooper, with the Economic Policy Institute, told us last year that it is important not to raise the minimum wage too quickly, as businesses could struggle to afford their existing staff and may have to let people go, which is not ideal. Rather, it’s important to set a rate that gives businesses time to adjust.
Click on Detroit
January 27, 2023
On the latter option, several politicians on the left have proposed finding new tax revenue, by for example removing the payroll tax cap, which currently exempts income over $160,000 from the tax. As the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out, the cap was supposed to allow for 90 percent of payroll income to be taxed by Social Security, but thanks to inequality and soaring incomes at the top, in 2021 that figure plummeted to 81.4 percent. Scrapping the cap would mean that Jamie Dimon (who makes $34.5 million per year) and you would pay the same amount of payroll income as a percentage of salary into the system.
American Prospect
January 27, 2023
Some experts and investors think the Fed has already done enough to keep annual inflation moving down to its target of 2 percent and should be careful about weighing down the economy with even higher rates. “I think there is all the room in the world for the Fed to really reduce its pace of interest rate increases. Honestly, I’d go to zero,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Hill
January 27, 2023
According to one estimate from the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, reported and unreported wage theft could amount to as much as $50 billion per year owed to workers.
CBS
January 27, 2023
But the prices are burdensome for most and impossible for many. The average price for infant care in the state is $9,480 per year — 29% higher than in-state college tuition, the Economic Policy Institute estimates. Average care for a 4-year-old costs $8,113 per year.
North Carolina Health News
January 27, 2023
Last fall, the Economic Policy Institute performed an analysis of teacher pay trends from 1970 to 2021, and found that teachers earn 23.5% less on average compared to their peers of similar educational backgrounds. Sherratt also said that 62% of parents surveyed in a PDK poll on public schools last year said they did not want their child to go into teaching, with low pay the top-listed reason.
Nevada Current
January 27, 2023
They are hired by Silicon Valley companies out of U.S. universities, a point made by Lofgren and Eshoo. Visa workers are also hired by outsourcing companies to help facilitate the transfer of work overseas, resulting in job losses of U.S. workers. And these companies are major users of the H-1B visa, according to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study last year.
Tech Target
January 27, 2023
Despite being optimistic about the future of the U.S. labor market, Elise Gould, an economist at the Washington-based non-profit the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told Newsweek she’s concerned about workers in the public sector.
“Many public sector jobs simply have not returned [after the pandemic] and have not seen the same kinds of gains [as other sectors],” she said, mentioning jobs in education, and local- and state-level roles. “The private sector has had a much more substantial bounce back in the recovery than the public sector has.”
Newsweek
January 27, 2023
The debt ceiling, an arbitrary, purely political limit on federal … back by five to six years, according to the Economic Policy Institute. (paywall).
MarketWatch
January 27, 2023
Of course, education and skill development are essential components of sound policy, and several of the EDQ articles suggest how to improve it. But in the real economy, experts like those at the Economic Policy Institute show our policy bias towards individualized and company-focused approaches hasn’t led to shared prosperity.
Forbes
January 27, 2023
But in their analysis of the data, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) explain why the new data, taken as a whole, are less than encouraging. For one thing, the economy added nonunion jobs at a greater rate than unionized ones, so the overall share of workers with union membership actually declined very slightly from 11.6 percent to 11.3 percent. Also, the raw numbers, though not insubstantial, were driven in part by unusually strong job growth that won’t necessarily persist into the coming years. Still, seen in relation to other developments such as the fifty-year high in public support for unions registered by Gallup in 2021, the data offers some evidence that a nascent fightback against the long-term decline of unionized work has begun.
Jacobin
January 27, 2023
Across the U.S., union interest is high, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank, using data from BLS and the National Labor Relations Board. It cited a 53% increase in union election petitions from October 2021 to September 2022.
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 27, 2023
Now that the right to abortion is no longer federally protected, and abortion access is vanishing in red states, it’s time to reverse course and position reproductive health care as an economic issue. This shouldn’t be too be difficult, as the facts on the ground support the connection. A recent report written by Asha Banerjee from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provides a new, detailed look into the economic consequences of state level abortion bans. Using five economic security metrics — the minimum wage, unionization rates, unemployment insurance rates, Medicaid expansion, and incarceration rates — the report concludes that abortion bans compound economic inequality.
Jacobin
January 27, 2023
Misclassifying employees as gig workers can cost them thousands of dollars in lost pay and benefits, according to a new analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Business Insider
January 27, 2023
Only 1 percent of Michigan’s 4.4 million workers, about 52,000 total, were making minimum wage when the rate increased this month, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington D.C. that conducts research.
Lansing City Pulse
January 27, 2023
Based on data from the Social Security Administration, the percentage of earned income subject to Social Security’s payroll tax has declined from 90% in 1983 to just 81.4% as of 2021. As noted by a recently published blog from the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the lowest level of earnings being subjected to the payroll tax in 49 years. More importantly, it’s confirmation that wage growth for high-earning workers is outpacing the near-annual increase in the maximum taxable earnings cap for Social Security’s payroll tax.
Motley Fool
January 27, 2023
Based on data from the Social Security Administration, the percentage of earned income subject to Social Security’s payroll tax has declined from 90% in 1983 to just 81.4% as of 2021. As noted by a recently published blog from the Economic Policy Institute, that’s the lowest level of earnings being subjected to the payroll tax in 49 years. More importantly, it’s confirmation that wage growth for high-earning workers is outpacing the near-annual increase in the maximum taxable earnings cap for Social Security’s payroll tax.
Motley Fool
January 27, 2023
As Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute points out, increased public investments in child care and the elderly could reduce inflationary pressures. We will never be as cheap to produce as television sets, cars, or even robots. We will remain more valuable, even if we can’t be bought and sold.
The American Prospect
January 20, 2023
Bridge Michigan
January 20, 2023
To talk about the Glacier case and what a SCOTUS ruling could mean for working people’s right to strike in the US, I spoke with Terri Gerstein, a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and the director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program.
The Real News Network
January 20, 2023
To find the best cities for renting families to live for under $6,000 per month, GOBankingRates used data from ApartmentList, the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator and Sperling’s Best. Collectively, this data allowed us to find the average 2-bedroom rent in 2022, determine the cost of children within select metro areas and find cities with an overall cost of living index below 90.
GO Banking Rates
January 20, 2023
Women living in states that restrict or ban abortion face greater economic insecurity than those living in states where they have access, new research finds. Since the nearly seven months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, half of all states – 26 in total – have implemented new abortion restrictions or all-out bans. In nearly all 26 states, there are lower minimum wages, unionization levels, access to Medicaid and unemployment benefits, as well as higher rates of incarceration than states with more lenient abortion policies, according to new research by the Economic Policy Institute.
Kaiser Health News
January 20, 2023
Colorado teachers salaries have been well below the national average, and educators in the state take home nearly 36% less than other college-educated workers, according to a 2022 report published by the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, which is based in Washington, D.C.
Colorado Sun
January 20, 2023
It comes as little surprise, but a new post from a pair of Economic Policy Institute experts — economist Ben Zipperer and state policy coordinator Dave Kamper — confirms that a key contributor to the stagnant low wages that millions of American working people continue to labor under is simple: out-of-date state minimum wage laws. The following is republished from EPI’s Working Economics blog:
The Progressive Pulse
January 20, 2023