According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, 8.4 million workers will start getting a higher paycheck come January 1. That’s due to a combination of inflation adjustments, legislation, and ballot measures. Taken together, the increases will boost pay for those 8.4 million workers by over $5 billion — and women and workers of color, who are all more likely to be low-wage workers, will be disproportionately impacted.
About 188,000 Ohioans will see direct wage gains while about 275,000 other workers across the state are likely to see bigger paychecks as employers adjust their pay scales, says Policy Matters Ohio, citing estimates from the Economic Policy Institute.
NPR’s Daniel Estrin asks Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research for the Economic Policy Institute, about the connection between immigration and inflation.
Meanwhile, 23 states and Washington, D.C., according to the Economic Policy Institute, will implement higher minimum wages on Jan. 1. Those increases, which will range from 23 cents to $1.50 per hour, will affect 8 million workers.
The alleged trend of “quiet quitting” grabbed media attention this year. But plenty of employees were, by official measures, working more than ever. The U.S. had an “exceptionally strong” job market in 2022, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, with 4.3 million jobs created through November. That was the second-best performance since 1940, he said, with the first-best being 2021.
The bill would close a loophole in the 2010 Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law, which mostly only covers hourly workers and excludes most salaried occupations, per the Economic Policy Institute.
As a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute outlines, without increased domestic production of electric vehicle batteries and other power train components, the large-scale introduction of electric vehicles could result in the loss of over two hundred fifty thousand jobs in automobile assembly and parts production.
Child care in Wisconsin is already expensive, ranking 20th among states and the District of Columbia for most expensive infant care. The average annual cost of child care was nearly $12,600 in October 2020, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“It would be political negligence to do a one-off and not hold Republicans to account,” said Celine McNicholas, chief lobbyistfor the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute who previously served as director of congressional and public affairs for the NLRB. “You lose any kind of leverage with Republicans if you move Ring’s seat without moving Wilcox’s seat. You essentially give Republicans an advantage.”
Fewer options for parents have also led to higher costs in most areas, though prices vary wildly state to state. For example, while the average annual price of a full-time child care center for a toddler costs more than $24,000 in Washington, DC, it comes out to roughly $6,800 in Arkansas, according to a calculator made by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. States like California and New York have some of the least affordable child care options, costing nearly half the median income for a single-parent family, according to a 2021 report from Child Care Aware of America.
By the numbers: Black and Latino workers make up 12.8% and 17.4% of the total workforce, respectively, but only 10% and 9.8% of the professional workforce, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO.
In 2017, the FBI reported the cost of street crime at about $13.8 billion. That same year, 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 percent of low-wage workers.
The Economic Policy Institute has been tracking the “teacher pay penalty” for 18 years, and in 2021, it reached a new high: Teachers earn 23.5 percent less than comparable college graduates.
Kriti Gupta and Jon Erlichman discuss the SEC overahaul and the World Cup final. Guests Today: Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and Joe Mecane of Citadel Securities.
Experts say rampant inflation has sunk the real value of today’s federal minimum wage to its lowest point in decades. “(Congress) has really failed at their job of making sure that we have wage standards that are up to date,” said Ben Zipperer, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute — a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
The Economic Policy Institute determined that: “the expanded Child Tax Credit—a key element of the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP) — lifted 2.1 million children out of poverty. The ARP Child Tax Credit is the leading reason child poverty fell so precipitously from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, the lowest rate on record.”
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.
The analysis of Social Security Administration data was done by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which also compared wage trends over the past four decades. Between 1979 and 2021, the top 1 percent has seen its wages rise by over 200 percent, while the 0.1 percent’s wages rose by over 460 percent, the report found. The bottom 90 percent, meanwhile, saw its wages rise by a mere 29 percent, or just about a 0.7 percent raise yearly on average, compared to the 11.1 percent yearly raise on average for the top 0.1 percent.
The state minimum wage increases around New Year’s Day will affect 3.4 million workers currently earning base pay and another 5.4 million who make somewhat more but will benefit from ripple effects within a business, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The figures don’t include city and county minimum wage increases.
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 new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The bottom 90% of earners, meanwhile, swallowed an overall loss of 0.2% in inflation-adjusted earnings in the same period.
The employer-provided pension—monthly income from a company for which you no longer work—is a hoary part of the American past that never really existed for most of us. In 1970, at pensions’ peak, just under one in two American workers worked for an employer with the traditional retirement plan. (“A Timeline of the Evolution of Retirement in the United States,” Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center, 2010, scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/legal/50.) Today, the number stands at one in five in the private sector. (Monique Morrissey, “Private-Sector Pension Coverage Fell by Half over Two Decades,” Working Economic Blog, Economic Policy Institute, January 11, 2013, https://www.epi.org/blog/private-sector-pension-coverage-decline/.)
“Inflation can normalize without taking a hammer to the head of the economy,” Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, said Tuesday. But Powell—who has openly targeted workers’ wages as CEO pay runs rampant—brushed aside such arguments during his press conference Wednesday, claiming there is no “painless way to restore price stability.”
Jennifer Sherer, a senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Policy Institute — a think tank focusing on progressive economic policy — said that the position of fast food work was not immutable because workers’ wages and their standing in the economy are determined by political factors. “There’s this outmoded idea that somehow there’s a natural market that’s going to set the right wage,” Sherer said. “Employers intentionally find ways to boost their profits by suppressing wages, and policy choices have enabled and sort of abetted that wage suppression.”
Since Jan. 2014, 28 states and D.C. have changed their laws around minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has been tracking these changes nationwide.
Even when Black Americans do build wealth through homeownership, downturns in the economy wipe them out. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 2005 to 2009, a time period covering the foreclosure crisis, Black households saw their median net worth fall by 53 percent, while white households saw just a 17 percent decline. And on the flip side, when the housing market is doing well, Black households tend to benefit less than white ones.
The alleged trend of “quiet quitting” grabbed media attention this year. But plenty of employees were, by official measures, working more than ever. The U.S. had an “exceptionally strong” job market in 2022, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, with 4.3 million jobs created through November. That was the second-best performance since 1940, he said, with the first-best being 2021.