EPI in the news

• Early arrival: Latinos make up majority of NYC construction deaths

  Huerta, along with nearly all of the people who died in construction-related accidents last year were Latino, according to data from the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the Department of Buildings. Construction workforces as a whole are also growing increasingly more Hispanic and Latino, according to Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. These groups likely account for over half construction workers on all non-union sites in the city.

  Documented | February 24, 2020
• How Blockchain can solve the unintended consequences of the gig economy

  Here’s the reality: despite all the rosy promises of flexible, rewarding work, most gig workers don’t actually make good wages. Often their take-home pay is well below a living wage, sometimes even less than legally mandated minimum wage rates. A report by the Economic Policy Institute found ride-hail drivers in the US earn about $12 per hour after deducting car expenses and gasoline. These numbers are much lower than what many platform companies often advertise their workers – or “partners” – will make.

  Forbes | February 24, 2020
• Radio clip (teacher shortage)

  Good Morning Show

  | February 24, 2020
• Teachers’ daily battle with behavior and disrespect

  According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, the United States is short about 110,000 teachers, and that number is expected to double by 2025.

  13 News Now | February 24, 2020
• Some striking numbers

  By Joe’s metrics, the data on strikes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released last week reveal a labor movement with a lot more potential energy—and kinetic energy, too—than the membership numbers reveal. During the two-year period of 2018-2019, the BLS reported, a yearly average of 455,400 workers engaged in major work stoppages, which, as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out, the highest two-year average since 1983-1984. It was in the mid-eighties that workers generally stopped striking, reacting to President Reagan’s mass firing of striking air traffic controllers, which led many large private-sector employers to fire their striking workers, too (for which required reading is Joe’s Collision Course, his account of the controllers’ strike and firing).

  The American Prospect | February 24, 2020
• Mike Bloomberg opposed a minimum wage increase in 2015. He supports one now

  Economic Policy Institute, The EITC and minimum wage work together to reduce poverty and raise incomes, Jan. 22, 2020

  Politifact | February 24, 2020
• Fact-checking Bernie Sanders on a $15 minimum wage

  We found that Sanders was close on describing a study released Feb. 5 by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank. But it’s important to note that this study assumes that no net jobs will be lost as a result of a minimum wage — an assumption that is speculative and, in some corners, controversial.

  Politifact | February 24, 2020

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