EPI in the news

• Jill On Money: Will inflation kill the recovery?

  Adding to the inflationary pressure are wages, which are rising. In a rare, Onion-esque sarcastic headline, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote, “Newsflash: Higher pay attracts workers.” While some companies can absorb higher employee costs, others are passing them along to consumers, which Economist Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton believes could mean that “Some of the inflation we are experiencing could linger.”

   

  The Mercury News | July 27, 2021
• Are remote workers more replaceable than in-person workers? Managers say yes

  Overall, the ability to work from home falls unevenly along dimensions like education level and race, according to research published by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think-tank.

   

  MarketWatch | July 27, 2021
• ‘A Critical Part of Our Infrastructure’: How California Plans to Bolster Child Care

  It’s a matter of saying this is a critical part of our infrastructure. It’s necessary to support families, it’s necessary to support our economy, and it’s necessary to make sure the people doing this work are not worried about feeding their own families. The problem is getting movement on that, getting the general public, and our legislators to support that in full.

  Some of my colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute have done some estimates to help us understand what the harm is and what the loss is for not doing that. They’ve estimated that parents are foregoing $30-$35 billion in income and lost household income because they either have to leave the labor force, or reduce their hours.

  KQED | July 27, 2021
• Federal bill holdup delaying bus replacements, Topeka Metro says

  Congress members disagree on how to pay for the bill, according to Rob Scott, Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

  “The problem has been a reluctance to spend, a reluctance to tax, a desire to prioritize tax-cutting over all other priorities,” Scott said.

  KSNT | July 27, 2021
• Biden Administration Moves to Tilt Pay and Power Toward Workers

  Recent action “signifies a shift that I hope will then launch into a much broader proactive agenda,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who served as the Labor Department’s chief economist during the Obama administration.

   

  The Wall Street Journal | July 27, 2021
• More students of color are attending Cape Cod schools. But the vast majority of teachers are white

  Nationwide, fewer young people are pursuing teaching careers. From 2008 to 2015, the number of college students earning education degrees fell 15 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Teacher retention may be an even bigger hurdle, with the turnover rate for teachers of color surpassing that of white teachers by 20 to 30 percent.

   

  Boston Globe | July 27, 2021
• What’s a “Stuck Nation”? America in 2021, paralyzed by injustice and inequality

  As the Obama years drew to a close, the Economic Policy Institute observed astutely that the country had “suffered from rising income inequality and chronically slow growth in the living standards of low- and moderate-income Americans.”

  The erosion of the middle class that has been in the making at least since the 1970s — when American workers stopped seeing their wages grow at a pace with their increasing productivity — was continuing.  By August 2016, EPI reported that from 1973 until 2015, while productivity increased by more than 73%, hourly pay for workers went up only 11% — in other words, productivity grew by more than six times the rise in wages earned by workers.

  Salon | July 27, 2021

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