EPI in the news

• Not just salary: New listing ranks best and worst states for teachers

  The pay gap between the weekly wage of teachers and other college graduates working in other professions grew to a record 26.4% in 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  FOX 32 Chicago | September 18, 2024
• NH’s Median Household Income Increased in 2023, Poverty Held Steady

  The Economic Policy Institute estimated the income a family needed in 2024 for a “modest yet adequate standard of living,” which does not include costs such as paying for student loans or for homeownership as well as for any form of entertainment, ranged from $72,501 to $94,597 for a household with two adults and one child, depending on where they lived in New Hampshire.

  Business NH Magazine | September 18, 2024
• What the Fed’s rate cut means for consumers, businesses and investors

  It’s been a confusing time for the labor market. The labor market is extraordinarily strong when judged by any historical benchmark, economists Elise Gould and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post last week. Yet recent signs of softening have raised concerns that the Fed is moving too slowly to lower rates.

  “There is no reason why the Fed should be looking to generate a weaker labor market, but recent months have seen signs of a slight softening at the labor markets on the margin,” the two economists wrote. “Continued contractionary monetary policy will exacerbate this labor market weakening, even as the last two years have shown that such weakening is clearly not needed to get the last bit of excess inflation wrung out of the system.”

  The Washington Post | September 18, 2024
• Study: Increasing minimum wage does not reduce jobs

  A new report shows minimum wage increases have had little effect on the number of jobs in Maryland and nationwide.

  While the rhetoric around increasing the minimum wage often comes with the caution it will reduce low-wage employment, a new review of decades of research showed most studies found no job losses after the state or local minimum wage is raised.

  Ben Zipperer, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute and the review’s co-author, said raising the minimum wage has unquestionably benefited workers.

  “Minimum wages very consistently have ended up raising the incomes of low-wage workers,” Zipperer pointed out. “They have done so in a way that doesn’t cause any big negative employment shocks or big disruptions in their local economy.”

  Public News Service | September 18, 2024
• A Fed Rate Cut Would Cap a Winning Streak for Biden and Harris on Prices

  Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said he would guess “it’s a very, very small slice of people who would recognize this kind of symbolic importance of the cut” for the economy and the administration’s stewardship of it.

  It is possible, he added, that the Fed waited so long to cut rates that it has “denied the Harris campaign this advantage for a long enough time that its force now is almost totally eroded.”

  New York Times | September 18, 2024
• Raise Wages? No Need — McDonald’s Is Hiring Inmates Instead

  As an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found, in recent years, the number of minors discovered working illegally increased more than threefold, from a little more than 1,000 in 2015 to more than 3,800 in 2022. As Nina Mast, one of the report’s authors, told Fortune, fast-food franchises constitute the largest group of violators by far.

  Jacobin | September 18, 2024
• Santa Monica is the most expensive city to conduct business according to new study

  Minimum Wage: The survey calculated minimum wages for all cities as of January 1, 2024, with local adjustments above federal levels. Data was sourced from the Economic Policy Institute and UC Berkeley.

  Santa Monica Daily Press | September 18, 2024

More EPI in the news