EPI in the news

• Report: Union rights would close public sector pay gap in VA

  The Economic Policy Institute argued a bill to grant collective bargaining rights to state and local government employees would close the statewide pay gap between public and private workers. The Commonwealth has one of the largest public sector pay gaps, with most employees making around 27% less than their private sector peers with similar jobs and levels of education.

  Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of state policy and research for the institute, said collective bargaining rights are essential to the workforce. She explained employees of private companies already enjoy the right to unionize.

  “Having the option to unionize and collectively bargain is one of the few effective tools that workers have to level the playing field in our very imbalanced power in our labor market,” Sherer pointed out. “And to bring their concerns and their advocacy for what pay should look like in terms of the value they’re producing.”

  Public News Service | February 13, 2026
• Hirono joins push for $130 billion to modernize public schools

  The legislation requires states to create public databases to track the condition of school facilities. This would give parents and officials a clearer look at which campuses need the most urgent repairs.

  Supporters of the bill said the investment would create approximately 2 million jobs. Economic Policy Institute data indicates that every $1 billion spent on construction supports more than 17,000 jobs.

  Maui Now | February 13, 2026
• Researchers Jailbreak ChatGPT to Find Out Which State Has the Laziest People

  Those are also, of course, often the markers of poorer communities, and there is no evidence that lower-income households are any more “lazy” than wealthier ones—in fact, data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that people living in poverty are more likely to take on multiple jobs, work longer and more irregular hours, and deal with more dangerous working conditions. 

  Gizmodo | February 13, 2026
• Trump’s anti-DEI policies are hurting college-educated Black women

  A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute this week captures how Black women have been uniquely impacted by fluctuations in the economy and repeated cuts to the workforce over the past year—including Trump’s directive to trim headcount across the federal government. That decision drove out about 277,000 workers. In 2025, the rate of employment among Black women dipped to 55.7%, a decrease of 1.4 percentage points. This is a particularly steep decline over the course of a year—among the “sharpest one-year declines” in the last 25 years, according to the EPI. 

  As unemployment steadily climbed from 5.8% to 6.7% during 2025, Black women’s overall labor force participation dropped from 60.6% to 59.7%, indicating that more Black women have either left the workforce or stopped looking for a job. 

  This shift in employment also appears to have largely affected Black women with college degrees. “I was surprised at the magnitude of the decline for college-educated Black women,” says Valerie Wilson, director of the EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy. The employment rate for Black women with at least a bachelor’s degree fell by more than 3.5 percentage points in 2025—significantly more than among Black women who are not college graduates. 

  Fast Company | February 13, 2026
• The Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier Than Ever to Exploit Farmworkers

  A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that, collectively, these policies will transfer between $4.4 and $5.4 billion a year from farmworkers to their employers.

  …

  The Department of Labor currently employs between 490 and 611 investigators, the lowest number on record in its history; they’re tasked with overseeing 11 million workplaces.

  “Employers are going to know that they can act with total impunity,” says Dan Costa, a lead researcher at EPI.

  The Nation | February 13, 2026
• Can productivity boom lift US workers’ record low share of GDP? Unlikely

  Analysts at the Economic Policy Institute say the tide really started to turn against labor and in favor of capital some 45 years ago, when the “productivity-pay gap” began to widen. Between 1980 and 2025, productivity rose more than 90% while hourly pay rose only 33%, meaning productivity grew 2.7 times faster than wages. That gap is now a chasm.

  Reuters | February 13, 2026
• Struggling to get by: Behind the US underemployment crisis

  Underemployment has been on the rise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has tracked the rate of underemployment since 1978. Today, 8 percent of the US population is underemployed, up 0.5 percent from 2024 and it is up 1.1 percent from 2023.

  Al Jazeera | February 13, 2026

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