EPI in the news

• CEO pay jumps to $19 million annually, as fears mount over the wealthy pocketing gains

   

  Top executives of America’s biggest companies saw their average annual pay surge to $18.9 million in 2017, according to a report released Thursday, fueling concerns about the gulf between the nation’s richest and everyone else. The dramatic 18 percent jump in chief executive pay came as wages for American workers remained essentially flat, pushing the gap between executive compensation and employee pay to its highest point in about a decade. (whole story)

  Washington Post | August 16, 2018
• US bosses now earn 312 times the average worker’s wage, figures show

   

  The chief executives of America’s top 350 companies earned 312 times more than their workers on average last year, according to a new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. The rise came after the bosses of America’s largest companies got an average pay rise of 17.6% in 2017, taking home an average of $18.9m in compensation while their employees’ wages stalled, rising just 0.3% over the year. (whole story)

  The Guardian | August 16, 2018
• The Gap Between CEO and Worker Pay Is Nearing Pre-Financial Crisis Levels

   

  While the U.S. stock market has soared since President Donald Trump’s 2016 election, those rising tides have disproportionately boosted the salaries of CEOs—rather than their workers. Indeed, while CEOs of the nation’s 350 largest companies earned about $18.9 million in 2017, a 17.6% raise from a year earlier, their workers’ paychecks increased roughly 0.3% during the same time period, according to a Thursday study from the Economic Policy Institute. (whole story)

  Fortune | August 16, 2018
• FACT CHECK: White House Apologizes For False Claim About African-American Jobs

  Janelle speaks ~2:54-3:21

  NPR | August 16, 2018
• The Black-White Unemployment Ratio Has Barely Budged

   

  The black-white unemployment ratio does tend to shrink a bit when the economy is doing well, said Janelle Jones, an analyst with the liberal Economic Policy Institute.  “When the national unemployment is pushed that low, it has a huge impact on who gets hired,” Jones said. “It forces employers to expand hiring networks.”

  The Huffington Post | August 16, 2018
• It’s Capitalism’s Fault That Young People Prefer Socialism

   

  This era reached its peak about 65 years ago, when despite postwar labor disputes and the national disgrace that was Jim Crow, the booming US economy helped it get the Cold War off on the right foot. Producing what has become known as the Great Compression, the high tax rates of World War II and explosion of the union movement had already made America significantly more financially equal by the late 1940s and early 50s. In 1954, often brandished as the high-water mark for the American labor movement, the share of the total national income going to the top 10 percent of the population was “only” about 32 percent, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. In 2012, by contrast, the top 10 percent nabbed 48 percent of all income, while just about 11 percent of workers were represented by a union.

  VICE | August 15, 2018
• Unions brought black Americans into the middle class. They’re now being decimated

   

  Working, unionised black women, according to the Economic Policy Institute, “are paid 94.9% of what their black male counterparts make”, while non-union black women make “just 91% of their counterparts”. Another study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that “unions help raise the wages of women and black and Hispanic workers – whose wages have historically lagged behind those of white men … Black and Hispanic workers get a larger boost from unionization than their white counterparts”.

  The Guardian | August 14, 2018

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