EPI in the news

• Who is affected most by the potential debt ceiling deal?

  Here & Now’s Deepa Fernandes talks with Samantha Sanders, director of government affairs and advocacy for the Economic Policy Institute, about who is affected by the potential deal to avoid default on the debt ceiling.

  This segment aired on May 30, 2023.

  WBUR Here and Now | June 2, 2023
• New report says child labor laws are under attack

  A recent economics report is setting off an alarm about children in America in the workforce. It says that across the country, states are trying to weaken child labor laws. 

  The headline from the Economic Policy Institute says “child labor laws are under attack.” And, that violations of the current laws are rising.

  Fox 5 Atlanta | June 2, 2023
• Republican Senator Wonders How Inner City Teachers ‘Got Degrees’

  A December 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) showed that about 96 percent of all public K–12 teachers have at least a four-year college degree, while about 56 percent had advanced degrees. Previously existing national teacher shortages were heavily exacerbated by the pandemic, further impacting educators who had already been worried about poor compensation and stress levels.

  Newsweek | June 2, 2023
• Column: The affirmative action calamity brewing at the Supreme Court

  The Economic Policy Institute notes that Black Americans are just over half as likely as white Americans to have a college degree. Yet college degrees are key drivers of social mobility, helping those who need it find a path out of poverty.

  LA Times | June 2, 2023
• Work Visa Expansion Aims to Ease Border Surge, Summer Labor Woes

  Paywall.

  Bloomberg Law | June 2, 2023
• Unemployment dropped among Hispanic men and women in May but rose for Black workers

  That volatility is the big story in the May jobs report, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

   

  “It’s important when we look at something like that to pay attention to the longer-term trend, because every month there can be a lot of movement,” Gould said.

  “The longer-term trend suggests that the Black unemployment rate has been coming down,” she added. “So it’s about where it was three months ago. Yes, it was lower last month. It ticked up, but I think that probably it will resolve down again next month.”

  CNBC | June 2, 2023
• The AI boom could go one of 2 ways, and the path companies choose could make or break the US workforce

  But money saved from productivity gains doesn’t always end up in workers’ pockets. Since 1979, US worker-productivity growth has outpaced hourly-pay growth by 3.7 times, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, which attributes the divergence to a stagnant minimum wage, the decline of unions, and the scaling back of antitrust policy, among other factors.

  Insider | June 2, 2023

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