The significance of federal employment in raising living standards for Black workers
This piece was originally published in The Journal of the Center for Policy Analysis and Research (JCPAR). Read it here.
Introduction
For Black Americans, public-sector employment has historically provided a pathway to better, more equitable and secure job opportunities compared with available private-sector jobs. The federal government has played an especially vital role in establishing a robust Black middle class in the Washington, D.C. metro area. According to the 2023 American Community Survey, roughly 2 out of 5 Black adults in the D.C. metro area were college graduates, Black median household income was nearly $90,000 and the Black homeownership rate was 52.8%. Postal service jobs have been particularly valuable to Black workers without college degrees because of the uniform wage and benefit structure (all postal employees who have the same job title and job tenure are paid the same nationwide) and higher pay relative to comparable private-sector employment. With a minimum education requirement of a high school diploma, the median hourly wage of a postal worker is 43% higher than the typical high school graduate. While federal employment has opened the door to social and economic mobility for generations of Black Americans, it has often been the battleground and served as a compass in setting higher labor standards and equal employment policies in the United States.
CEO pay surged in 2025: CEOs are paid 325 times as much as the typical worker
Key findings:
- CEO pay at the top 350 U.S. firms rose 14.0% in 2025 to an average of $27.9 million.
- CEOs made 325 times as much as the typical worker in 2025. It hasn’t always been this way. In 1965, CEOs were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.
- From 1978–2025, top CEO compensation skyrocketed 1,316% while typical workers’ compensation increased only 28%.
- CEO pay has not climbed so fast because their skills or productivity rose spectacularly. It has risen instead simply because CEOs have gained and used increasing leverage over the corporate boards that set their pay.
- Policymakers can rein in excessive CEO pay through more progressive tax policy, corporate governance reforms, and strengthened labor standards, including laws that make it easier for workers to unionize. One new EPI policy proposal calls for default collective bargaining at firms where the CEO-to-worker pay ratio is especially exorbitant.
Our latest analysis finds that CEO pay rose 14.0% at the top 350 U.S. firms in 2025 as the CEO-to-worker pay ratio hit 325-to-1.
Between 1978 and 2025, CEO pay jumped an astronomical 1,316% while typical workers’ pay only rose 28%. As a result, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio increased more than tenfold since 1978.
2025 Census data on income and poverty: EPI economist breaks down latest findings
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of U.S. Census Bureau data for 2025 on annual earnings, income, and poverty. Read the full thread here.
Employers spend over $1.5 billion on union busters: New LaborLab tools help shed light on union-avoidance industry
When workers seek to form a union, employers often respond by hiring union-avoidance consultants to dissuade workers from their organizing efforts. A recent EPI and LaborLab report estimates that employers spend over $1.5 billion each year on union avoidance. Last week, our partners at LaborLab released new tools that shed light on the highly secretive and highly profitable union-avoidance industry.
The Union-Busting Cost Calculator helps workers estimate how much their employers are spending on union-avoidance consultants, instead of investing that money in their workplaces. Too often employers claim unions are third parties that disrupt workplace dynamics and create costs for workers who are paying for representation they don’t need. On the contrary, unions win wage increases and benefits for workers, and it is employers who spend millions on third-party union-avoidance consultants, rather than raising workers’ wages and improving working conditions. Further, employers often hire the same consulting and law firms to help with their union avoidance. LaborLab’s union-buster search helps demystify who the key actors are in the union-avoidance industry and identify who is behind anti-union campaigns.
2025 Census data preview: Key measures of earnings, income, and poverty may show early signs of a softer labor market and weaker safety net
Key takeaways
- The 2025 Census data on earnings, income, and poverty may reflect how the Trump administration’s policy choices were beginning to impact the economic well-being of workers, families, and children last year.
- Last year’s economy was characterized by slowing job growth, rising wage inequality, and growing policy uncertainty. We expect to see little to no improvements in key economic indicators such as lower-end household income and supplemental poverty rates between 2024 and 2025.
- The 2026 story is still unfolding and is likely to be worse, given these factors: decelerating nominal wage growth, higher inflation, and the 2025 budget reconciliation law that will leave more families and children vulnerable to poverty.
Next week, the Census Bureau will release the latest data on earnings, income, and poverty for 2025. This data could show early signs of how the Trump administration’s policy choices impacted the economic well-being of workers, families, and children across the country. The initial strong recovery from the pandemic recession measurably slowed in 2025 as the labor market softened and the policy climate grew more uncertain. To help place the upcoming data release in context, we highlight key trends that have characterized the economic and policy landscape in 2025. Though the economy continued to soften as inflation worsened in 2026 and the safety net grew increasingly more difficult to access as a result of the Republican Budget Reconciliation Law, the data in the Census will only provide specific insights for living standards in 2025.
In summary, we find:
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- The U.S. economy in 2025 grew more slowly than in 2024, adding fewer than half as many jobs—only 764,000 jobs compared with 1.825 million in 2024. The unemployment rate slowly rose over the course of 2025, and the hires rate was depressed, making it harder for young people in particular to break into the labor market. While the prime-age employment-to-population remained relatively resilient to labor market softening, prime-age Black workers experienced large declines in their employment rate.
- With more moderate inflation, strong nominal wage growth translated into decent average hourly wage gains between 2024 and 2025, but gains were not shared equally. Lower-end wage growth stalled in 2025, which could have implications for lower-end incomes and poverty rates.
- Because the Republican budget reconciliation law is making basic needs programs like SNAP increasingly more difficult for families to access, we don’t expect to see any significant improvements in supplemental poverty between 2024 and 2025. We expect to the see the full impact of the Republican law in the years ahead.
- While the release will only provide data for 2025, our examination of the economic and policy landscape for 2026 suggests that a weaker job market, safety net cuts, and high inflation will worsen outcomes.
The answer to a stronger economy is more union power
This Labor Day, workers across the country are sending a clear message: they want a greater voice on the job. A near-record 71% of Americans approve of unions and surveys show over 50 million nonunion workers would join a union if they could.
At a time when many are struggling to afford basic necessities, it’s easy to understand why. Through unions and collective bargaining, workers have more power to win higher wages, better benefits, safer working conditions, and a fairer share of the wealth they create. Unions help build a strong middle class, reduce inequality, narrow racial economic disparities, and boost participation in our democracy.
Hiring rebounded in August, but long-term unemployment continued to rise
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning. Read the full thread here.
New legislation would boost the overtime pay premium and benefit 13.4 million workers: The Double Wage for Overtime Act extends worker protections
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) set workplace norms that are still in use almost 90 years later. The FLSA established the 40-hour standard workweek and overtime protections for workers. It guaranteed pay at a rate of 1.5 times the standard hourly wage for work past the 40-hour mark. Overtime protections were designed as a safeguard for workers—to prevent employers from overworking employees and to require firms to pay workers fairly for their labor when they put in extra time on the job. By making long hours more expensive, the overtime premium incentivizes employers to hire more workers and spread the work around.
But as the country’s workforce has shifted over the nearly 90 years since the FLSA was enacted, the FLSA’s overtime rate has not.
Recently, the Double Wage for Overtime Act was introduced by Rep. Casar (D-Texas) in the House and by Sen. Gallego (D-Ariz.) in the Senate. The Act would strengthen overtime protections for more than 13 million workers by amending the overtime rate for the first time since 1938. It would raise overtime pay from 1.5 times a worker’s regular rate of pay to double the regular rate.
Affordability’s key ingredient is union power: Tripling union membership would raise wages, reduce inequality, and strengthen communities. Policymakers should take note.
This is an excerpt from an op-ed originally published at In These Times. Read the full piece here.
Affordability—or the lack thereof—has dominated the recent political debate in the U.S. And for good reason. Across the country, too many families are struggling to make ends meet. However, almost every conversation about affordability focuses entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life more affordable is to make things cheaper.
But the actual driver of today’s affordability squeeze is suppressed pay—a consequence of decades of policy choices that weakened workers’ bargaining power and shifted income away from working people. Had pay for typical workers kept pace with productivity over the past 45 years, their paychecks today would be roughly 40% larger.
If policymakers are serious about addressing affordability, they would champion one institution that has consistently proven capable of raising pay: unions.
Through collective bargaining, unions are the most effective mechanism for workers to raise their wages and secure their fair share of the wealth they produce. Our new report at the Economic Policy Institute quantifies how transformative it would be to rebuild union power. Specifically, we examine what we stand to gain if we tripled current union membership to 30%—similar to its peak in the U.S. before decades of relentless attacks on unions and collective bargaining eroded it, and just shy of the current rate in Canada.
We find that tripling union membership would raise pay for the typical worker by more than $7,700 every year, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. This would be life-changing for a working family—nearly covering the cost of raising a child from birth through age 17, for example.
U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July as wage growth slowed
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning. Read the full thread here.