EPI in the news

• Jobless claims are up, but unemployment is still low. What does that mean?

  Now, none of them is saying the Federal Reserve has achieved that elusive soft landing in its effort to balance interest rate increases with economic growth. But Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute said so far, that does seem to be where we’re headed.

  “We see inflation coming down and unemployment not yet going up,” she said.

  Marketplace | May 12, 2023
• To Protect Our Children, Let’s Tax Our Rich

  The number of kids employed in direct violation of existing child labor laws, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute this past March reported, has soared 283 percent since 2015 — and 37 percent in just the last year alone. Last week brought the alarming news that three Kentucky-based McDonald’s franchises had kids as young as 10 working at 62 stores in four different states. Some of these under-working age children were working as late as 2 a.m.

  Inequality.org | May 12, 2023
• Fast federal response to pandemic key to US economic recovery, economists say

  “I think that this recovery was tremendous compared to any recovery in recent history because of the scale of the investments that were made by policymakers,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, pointing to the child tax credit as one example that helped fuel the strong recovery. “So I think the incredible bounceback that we saw in employment and wage growth was driven directly from, in large part, to the kinds of investments that policymakers made in things like shoring up the unemployment insurance system, making that stronger, making it a better safety net for many workers.” 

  States Newsroom | May 12, 2023
• Here’s how compensation of CEOs of top Triad employers compares to their rank-and-file employees

  The Economic Policy Institute said in an October report that “exorbitant CEO pay is a contributor to rising inequality that we could restrain without doing any damage to the wider economy.”

  Winston-Salem Journal | May 12, 2023
• Are Reparations the Remedy?

  The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has released a study arguing that wealth for the top 1 percent has grown by double digits while falling for the remaining 99 percent. 

  Providence Magazine | May 12, 2023
• Downside of higher pay? Fewer hours, fewer jobs, Twin Cities minimum wage study says

  Some economists also remain skeptical of the researchers’ findings that St. Paul’s minimum wage increases, which didn’t start taking effect until 2020, led to job losses in 2018 and 2019 as employers anticipated the coming changes. Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute called that finding “completely implausible.”

  Minneapolis Star Tribune | May 12, 2023
• A Money Mystery: What Happened To The Lowest Earners’ Pandemic-Era Cash Stash?

  However, there are reasons to believe Hoyt’s model may show a real trend. The topsy-turvy pandemic era job market has helped out the lowest-paid workers quite a bit: Between 2019 and 2022, wages for the bottom 10% of workers grew 9% after adjusting for inflation, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, found.

  Investopedia | May 12, 2023

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