EPI in the news

• For the biggest group of American workers, wages aren’t just flat. They’re falling.

   

  The falling wages promise to exacerbate historic levels of U.S. inequality. Within the labor force, it means workers who were already making less are falling further behind. And if private laborers as a whole are seeing their earnings flatten while the economy as a whole grows at an annual rate of more than 2 percent, that means the gains are going almost exclusively to people already at the top of the economic ladder, economists say. “The extra growth we are seeing in the economy is going somewhere: to capital owners and people at the top of the income distribution,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, noting workers’ share of corporate income remained relatively low as of January. “And what we’ve seen is in recent period a much higher share of total income earned going to owners of capital.” (Heidi quoted too)

  The Washington Post | June 18, 2018
• Is the gig economy a myth?

   

  “The nature of work hasn’t fundamentally changed,” argues Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a left- ­leaning research and advocacy organization “Freelancing and gig work are not taking over.” … In a study, Mishel reports that although Uber has about 833,000 drivers in a year, most drive only part time and for part of the year. Taking the high turnover into account, he estimates that the number of Uber drivers is equivalent to 90,521 full-time workers. Even including similar jobs at other companies, that’s only about 0.1 percent of full-time U.S. employment — one-tenth of 1 percent. Hardly a revolution.

  The Washington Post | June 18, 2018
• Stop Pretending Black Midwesterners Don’t Exist

   

  It is not just the white working class that is suffering — it is the working class, period. And we can’t solve the problem if we refuse to see who those workers actually are. By 2032, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the American working class will be made up mostly of people of color, including black workers

  The New York Times | June 18, 2018
• Labor ‘tightening their belts’ in preparation for Janus decision

   

  An internal Democracy Alliance analysis determined that some of the progressive nonprofits it supports, such as the Washington, D.C.-based Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and the Economic Policy Institute, receive a large portion of their revenue from unions and could thus see a dip in their budgets in future years. In preparation for the Janus decision, Democracy Alliance has appealed to its non-union donors and asked them to prepare to step up to help patch budgets for organizations that are used to receiving union funds.

  Politico Pro | June 18, 2018
• A Fight Over Tipping Is Tearing Progressives Apart

   

  The tipping system, which has its roots in racial discrimination, can disadvantage servers of color. A Cornell University study found that black servers are tipped significantly less than white ones. Research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows that raising the minimum wage disproportionately benefits women of color. Nationally, almost 13 percent of tipped workers live in poverty, or nearly double the rate of non-tipped workers, according to a joint report by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California-Berkeley. … David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and a supporter of 77, says that’s a common refrain from resistant owners. “The fact of the matter is that in those [seven states where there is no subminimum wage], small, locally owned restaurants have been thriving,” he says. “The notion that DC can’t figure out what their counterparts in Minneapolis or San Francisco or Portland have is just ridiculous. It seems like a ruse.”

  Mother Jones | June 18, 2018
• Being a father in California isn’t all that bad. You ought to try it

   

  Actually, we have a very real edge over your big-city hipster pals. The annual cost of raising a family in the Northern San Joaquin Valley is far, far, far lower than elsewhere in the state. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a family of four needs $77,317 a year to live comfortably in Stanislaus County. In San Joaquin it’s only $75,909; Merced County is lowest in the state at $70,675. Compare that to Santa Clara County ($129,082), San Diego ($97,547), Los Angeles ($92,295) or San Francisco ($141,320). Forget about Marin at $151,031.

  The Modesto Bee | June 18, 2018
• D.C.’s War Over Restaurant Tips Will Soon Go National

   

  “There has been absolutely no change in tipping practice, to the best of my knowledge, in any of the states that have no tipped minimum wages,” says David Cooper, senior economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that favors 77. “Think about it: When folks cross the border from Arizona to California to go out to eat, do you think that they are aware of the difference in the state’s tipped wage policy and change their tipping behavior? I doubt it.” (Dave and EPI cited throughout)

  City Lab | June 15, 2018

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