Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, said that 2022 “was a year of real worker power, due to huge job openings. The question will be whether that comes out on top compared to the very, very strong downward pressure on unionization, because of employer opposition.”
The Washington Post
January 20, 2023
Because of rising income inequality, the share of Americans’ incomes that are subject to the Social Security tax is at a nearly 50-year low, per a new report from the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
Axios
January 20, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, states with abortion restrictions have on average lower minimum wages, unionization levels and rates of Medicaid expansion.
The 19th
January 20, 2023
According to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the share of earnings subject to the tax hit its lowest level in nearly 50 years, since before reforms lengthened the solvency of the program. Only 81.4 percent of wages were subject to Social Security taxes in 2021 – far below the threshold of 90 percent of wages subject to the tax as set by the reforms in 1983.
Truthout
January 20, 2023
“So much of what typical people in this country have is based on their income and what they make in the labor market,” said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute. But that’s not the case for the superwealthy, she said.
Marketplace
January 20, 2023
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.
CNN
January 20, 2023
“Non-union workers have one source of power with respect to their employers, and it is their ability to quit,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “The only thing they have is the ability to say, ‘If you’re not paying a competitive wage, I’m just going to go somewhere else.’” Even if they don’t leave, it often takes a credible outside offer to get an employer give someone a raise.
The Nation
January 20, 2023
The report by the Economic Policy Institute also found that minimum wages are, on average, $3.75 an hour lower in abortion restrictive states compared with protective states ($8.17 compared with $11.92); and that restrictive states incarcerate people at 1.5 times the rate of protective states.
The Guardian
January 20, 2023
After three whiplash-inducing years of, first, professional vulnerability and, then, perceived invincibility, many people are returning to more typical levels of career security and leverage. Call it the Great Rebalancing of the employer-employee relationship. “We’re clearly headed there,” says Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
The Wall Street Journal
January 20, 2023
(Paywall) – features Magaret discussing the BLS union membership data.
MarketWatch
January 20, 2023
Our organization, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), has rigorously documented the factors that explain the divergence between productivity and worker compensation—effectively, the choices that have suppressed wage growth for most U.S. workers.
American Bar Association
January 13, 2023
“One of the key ways workers get raises in our economy is they change jobs,” Heidi Shierholz, the Economic Policy Institute’s policy director, told CBS in 2019. “If you take away that avenue, it hurts wage growth.”
Business Insider
January 13, 2023
Executive pay has ballooned 1,460 percent since 1978, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021, an all-time high.
The Washington Post
January 13, 2023
Crain's Detroit Business
January 13, 2023
Automotive News
January 13, 2023
“It doesn’t look like there will be, at least in the next few years, any chances of anything happening legislatively,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Northern Public Radio
January 13, 2023
In more liberal states, advocates for a higher minimum wage get a friendlier hearing in state legislatures. In 2016, California passed a $15 minimum wage that will have gone into full effect only this year. The new minimum of $15.50 puts the state’s minimum wage up by just over a third in seven years. California’s increase came through a combination of legislation and adjusting for inflation. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 3.2 million workers in California, almost a fifth of the state’s workforce, will see an increase in their wages, making up over a third of all workers nationally who will be affected by hikes in the minimum wage this year.
Grid News
January 13, 2023
When compared to peers, the Economic Policy Institute information found half of Wegmans employees made less than $15 in 2021. Wegmans employee pay …(paywall).
Democrat & Chronicle
January 13, 2023
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