When people have more money, they spend more. When more money is spent, there is more opportunity for job growth, mitigating the negative effects of raising the minimum wage. In fact, a study from the Economic Policy Institute predicted that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 could create 85,000 new jobs due to growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The Michigan Daily
December 9, 2022
If you’ve ever worked back-of-house at a fast-casual spot or even a full-service restaurant, then you know that restaurant work is some of the most highly demanding — and yet lowest-paid — work out there. According to a 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute, “by and large, the industry consists of very low-wage jobs with few benefits, and many restaurant workers live in poverty or near-poverty.”
Tasting Table
December 9, 2022
“This is a truly fertile generational shift potentially going on in the labor movement,” says Jennifer Sherer, a labor expert with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “People who are learning firsthand how to organize unions will take that knowledge into any job they go into in the future.”
Christian Science Monitor
December 9, 2022
“Cities and other localities are seeing improving people’s working conditions and setting standards as a core part of their mission,” says Gerstein, who wrote about the trend with LiJia Gong of Local Progress in a report published by the Economic Policy Institute.
But in some states, including Wisconsin, state legislatures have forbidden such local labor standards. Private sector agreements could offer an alternative when that happens.
“What is so promising about this approach is that the state pre-empting the city from setting higher standards doesn’t in any way prevent private parties from agreeing to higher standards,” Gerstein says.
Wisconsin Examiner
December 2, 2022
Meanwhile, Latinx workers in states paying more than the minimum saw their median net worth increase by 211%. Minimum wage laws disproportionally affect workers of color. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, has found that 31% of Black workers and 26% of Latinx workers would be impacted by a raise to $15.
Business Insider
December 2, 2022
Black households also lag in earnings, making only 61 cents for every dollar that comparable white households earn, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute of the latest Census Bureau data. With lower earnings on average, Black Americans are denied mortgages at double the national average, accordingto a 2022 LendingTree study.
The Miami Times
December 2, 2022
Given all the conflicting signals, economists say it can be difficult for consumers to know exactly how to feel about the economy at the moment. “It’s not new, this disparity between the actual facts on the ground about what’s going on in the economy and the sentiment,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“I remember this summer it was just unambiguously the strongest jobs recovery we’ve had in decades,” she added. “There’s just absolutely zero chance that we were in a recession — not only were we not in a recession, we were in just an extraordinarily fast recovery — and the polling, a huge share of people actually thought we were in a recession. It’s just mind-boggling, the disconnect that we’ve seen.”
MarketWatch
December 2, 2022
In addition to giving some government union contracts more power than law, Illinois also provides other extensive labor laws. Pro-labor sources agree. For example, the Economic Policy Institute, citing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, considers Illinois a state with “comprehensive bargaining rights.”
Illinois Policy
December 2, 2022
Given all the conflicting signals, economists say it can be difficult for consumers to know exactly how to feel about the economy at the moment. “It’s not new, this disparity between the actual facts on the ground about what’s going on in the economy and the sentiment,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
MarketWatch
December 2, 2022
After the Supreme Court ruled against explicitly racist zoning in 1917, cities sought other ways of keeping Black families out of middle-class neighborhoods or suburbs. Realizing that limiting the housing supply could keep neighborhoods too expensive for Black families, many cities passed rules against building apartments or putting homes too close together, according to Economic Policy Institute distinguished fellow Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law.
MLK 50
December 2, 2022
Saint Hilarie acknowledged that child care has become expensive for many families. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the average cost of infant care in Arizona is nearly $11,000 per year — more per year than in-state tuition at a public college. (In Tucson, the cost for care is closer to $10,000 annually.) That means the typical Arizona family can end up spending close to 20% of its income on child care for just one infant. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers anything more than 7% of a family’s income unaffordable.
Inside Tucson Business
December 2, 2022
Nearly 80 percent of private construction in New York is done by non-union workers. The decline in non-union construction labor began over the past decade as the city began to recover from the damage of the 2008 recession. For contractors looking to save money, open-shop work sites, which are jobs that employ mostly non-union workers but hire some union workers as well, are up to 30 percent cheaper than union sites. Part of the reason it’s cheaper is that contractors are not required to pay union wages or benefits, nor are they obligated to adhere to union rules. A 2021 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that union construction workers earned on average 40 percent more than their non-union workers.
Documented
December 2, 2022
There will also be data from the Labor Department, starting with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, also known as JOLTS.
Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, is interested in the “turnover” part.
“The kind of churn that we’ve been seeing in the labor market as people have quit their jobs in search of better ones.” She’ll also be checking whether layoffs are extending beyond the tech sector.
Marketplace
December 2, 2022
Stephanie Kelton: Daniel Costa is an attorney and the Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington DC.
Daniel Costa: An employer can seek out a worker from abroad using permanent residence, so essentially apply for a worker who would come in with lawful permanent residence status, most commonly referred to as a Green Card. Workers arrive almost with all the same rights as a US citizen and are on their way to becoming a US citizen.
MarketWatch
December 2, 2022
Under these circumstances of COVID-lockdown and war-related supply shortages, corporations in turn seized the opportunity to mark up their prices and pad their profits margins. Focusing on the U.S. economy, the Financial Times reported on November 28 that, “Margins of retailers and wholesalers have exploded in the past two years. The basic story here is that a combination of broken supply chains, rising input costs, and high demand created pricing power for producers, who raised mark-ups. Those mark-ups … are fueling inflation.” The economist Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute has confirmed this pattern for the U.S., calculating that 54 percent of the price increases for corporations has been due to rising profit margins.
Truthout
December 2, 2022
Joelle Gamble is the current chief economist at the US Department of Labor; Heidi Shierholz (now the president of the Economic Policy Institute) was its chief economist between 2014 and 2017.
Together, they talk with Felicia and Michael about how the shifts in economic policy thinking over the last decade helped produce today’s record-breaking recovery.
Roosevelt Institute
December 2, 2022
The fact that this figure hasn’t changed since 2009 (in spite of record-high inflation) caused wages to reach their lowest real value (when accounting for inflation) in 66 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But, per the investigation, Krispy Kreme failed to meet this less-than-$11 compensation for 516 employees working overtime. (Yikes.)
Tasting Table
November 23, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), “many voices in this debate have implicitly or explicitly argued that recession and inflation cause equivalent damage, or that inflation actually causes worse damage than recession. This view is clearly wrong — the economic damage wrought by recessions is far greater than that by single-digit inflation rates. Inflation, on the other hand, is pure redistribution in the short run, but does not directly reduce incomes in the aggregate.”
Monroe News
November 23, 2022
The number of quits has now exceeded the pre-pandemic high for 19 consecutive months, as more than 4 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in 17 of the past 19 months. Meanwhile employers, especially in low-wage sectors, are still struggling to fill open positions. The reasons for this trend are of course manifold, but one major driver appears to be that many workers are no longer willing to put up with the pay and/or working conditions they (perhaps grudgingly) accepted prior to the pandemic. “I certainly think that the pandemic has led many people to reevaluate their work and their priorities and what they want to do,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute said in a statement to Business Insider.
World Economic Forum
November 23, 2022
According to Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, a number of factors have contributed to staffing issues in schools around the country for teachers, paraprofessionals, substitutes, bus drivers, food service and custodial workers. One larger contributing factor is pay for those in public K-12 professions, with EPI reporting, “…school teachers are paid 19.2% less than similar workers in other occupations.”
Jefferson Star
November 23, 2022
Residents of Michigan should welcome such a repeal because right-to-work laws hurt workers. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, workers’ wages in right-to-work states are 3.1 percent lower than in non-right-to-work states, after adjusting for differences in the cost of living. Put another way: a worker’s wages are, on average, some $1,600 lower per year.
Detroit Free Press
November 23, 2022
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, the high-road scenario for cannabis legalization offers the industry an opportunity to be a model of good jobs. Through unionization, the report outlines how existing unionized cannabis businesses are benefiting from a formalized workers’ voice.
Forbes
November 23, 2022
The other concern offered by opponents to the minimum wage increase is that it is inflationary, and we are already having a problem with inflation. Open Sky cites research from the Economic Policy Institute, showing that raising the minimum wage to $15 over five years would increase overall price levels by less than 0.1% per year.
Star-Herald
November 23, 2022
Features Heidi discussing what sweeping tech layoffs mean for the economy.
Today Show
November 23, 2022
It’s things like this—the decades-long trend of companies shifting the finances of retirement off their balance sheets and onto the backs of their workers—that mean millions have to keep working whether they’d like to or not. However, notes a sweeping report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, “many face barriers to working longer and lack access to decent jobs with decent pay. Older workers who cannot afford to retire often face diminishing job quality and earnings as a result of loss of bargaining power.”
MarketWatch
November 23, 2022
The Fed policies increase “the cost of a home loan mainly through increasing the monthly payment that a family will have to pay, which is just exacerbating an affordability crisis that we’ve already had,” Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, told theGrio.
The Grio
November 23, 2022
The fact that this figure hasn’t changed since 2009 (in spite of record-high inflation) caused wages to reach their lowest real value (when accounting for inflation) in 66 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But, per the investigation, Krispy Kreme failed to meet this less-than-$11 compensation for 516 employees working overtime. (Yikes.)
Tasting Table
November 23, 2022