Congress and President Biden should not trade away human rights and asylum protections for temporary defense funding
The Senate, House, and White House are embroiled in down-to-the-wire negotiations to trade harmful changes to the asylum system and draconian immigration enforcement measures in exchange for approving a one-time defense supplemental funding package. We urge members of Congress and the White House to reject any such deal.
If Congress passes the one-time defense supplemental, the money will likely run out in just a few months. But the major anti-immigrant policy changes that Congress and the White House are reportedly considering will be permanent. These policies include an updated version of Trump’s Title 42 policy, mandatory detention of migrants and asylum seekers while they adjudicate their claims (likely including children), increased power to deport people encountered beyond the border areas of the United States with little to no due process (known as “expedited removal”), and changing the legal standard for asylum to make it more difficult to prove an initial claim.
If passed, the measures under consideration would go even further than some of the Trump administration’s harsh and brutal actions—and because they will carry statutory weight, it’s unlikely that immigrant rights advocates will have a path to challenge them in court. Further, it should be apparent to any reasonable legislator or administration official that these policy changes will not improve the situation at the southern border and will have harmful impacts on migrant and U.S. workers alike.
Wage inequality fell in 2022 because stock market declines brought down pay of the highest earners: But top 1% wages have skyrocketed 171.7% since 1979 while bottom 90% wages have seen just 32.9% growth
Key findings:
- Average inflation-adjusted annual earnings fell across the board in 2022, but the losses were far smaller among the bottom 90% of wage earners. The disproportionate losses for the highest earners—driven by stock market declines—led to a compression in the overall wage distribution over the year.
- Over the pandemic labor market, annual earnings growth was fairly consistent for high earners and the bottom 90%, averaging about 2.6% between 2019 and 2022.
- Over the long run, however, earnings growth has been vastly unequal. From 1979 to 2022:
- Wages for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively.
- Wages for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.
- The top 1% earned 12.9% of all wages in 2022—up from 7.3% in 1979. The bottom 90% received just 60.1% of all wages in 2022, far lower than their 69.8% share in 1979.
Newly available wage data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) allow us to analyze wage trends through 2022 for the top 1% and other very high earners, as well as for the bottom 90%. Average earnings for all groups fell in 2022, likely due to unusually high inflation. Year-over-year inflation was 8.1% because of supply chain bottlenecks, shifting demand during the pandemic, and energy price shocks from the Russian invasion of Ukraine which began in February 2022.
Table 1 shows average annual earnings by wage group for each of the business cycle peaks since 1979, as well as for the last two years (in 2022 dollars). Average real earnings for the bottom 90% of the wage distribution experienced the smallest losses in 2022 (–0.2%), 10 times smaller losses than the 90th-99th percentile (–2.2%) and 70 times smaller losses than the top 1% (–14.3%). This is consistent with other research finding that low-wage workers had the strongest hourly wage growth over the last three years, leading to significant wage compression.
At the very top of the earnings distribution, however, the losses far exceed what would be expected from this period of high inflation alone. SSA pay not only includes wages, salaries, commissions, bonuses, and severance pay; it also includes exercised stock options, which is not a small share of very high-end compensation. Given that 2022 saw stock prices fall considerably (especially relative to strong growth in 2021), these stock market declines pulled down top 1% pay in the SSA data and also explain why CEO pay fell in 2022.
Jobs report shows a sustainably strong labor market—not a coming recession
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 199,000 jobs added in November. Read the full thread here.
New York’s minimum wage law has a loophole that could freeze increases starting in 2027: This “off-ramp” provision must be repealed
This blog was produced in collaboration with the National Employment Law Project.
In a public opinion poll released earlier this year, more than two-thirds of New York voters expressed a belief that workers need to earn at least $20 an hour to live at a decent level. In response, a worker-led campaign, Raise Up New York, advocated for a $21.25 minimum wage in the Empire State.
Yet, despite overwhelming public support for a significant minimum wage raise, New York Governor Kathy Hochul demanded that the state legislature slash the target rate under consideration by more than $4 an hour, and she ultimately signed into law an inadequate minimum wage of just $16 by 2026 in upstate New York and $17 downstate. In addition, the law includes a dangerous “off-ramp” provision that could freeze any increase to the state’s minimum wage starting in 2027.
Top EPI reports and blogs in 2023: Child labor, economics of abortion bans, and teacher pay among the most read EPI research
It’s hard to imagine the plight of child labor would again emerge as a major problem in the United States, but that’s exactly what happened this year.
Economic Policy Institute researchers tracked the growing list of states moving to weaken child labor laws, and readers flocked to our research on the topic, making it the most read EPI report published this year.
The economics of abortion bans, teacher pay, and a host of other issues were also among the most read content on our website.
Here are the top five reports and the top five blog posts published this year.
Job openings continue to head toward pre-pandemic levels
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for October. Read the full thread here.
Native American child poverty more than doubled in 2022 after safety net cutbacks: Child poverty rate is higher than before the pandemic
This November, the U.S. observes National Native American Heritage Month. This commemoration celebrates the sovereignty, contributions, and resilience of tribal nations and Native people in the face of a violent, painful, and ongoing history.1 The enduring effects of colonialism, genocide, and state-sanctioned theft and violence continue to shape the socioeconomic outcomes of Native people. Today, the Native American community makes up a diverse and growing share of the U.S. population, with children accounting for more than one-quarter of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) population.2
Poverty increased sharply for AIAN children in 2022, as policymakers allowed key economic relief measures to expire that helped families absorb the shock of the pandemic. Native American children have historically been painfully exposed to economic vulnerability. Structural inequities in the labor market and the broader economy continue to limit the earnings of AIAN families and leave workers in this community unfairly exposed to job losses.
If you must argue about the economy over Thanksgiving dinner, at least get the facts right
How the economy is doing has always been a contentious topic, particularly when friends and family with different politics gather for Thanksgiving dinner. And the question has gotten even thornier this year, with consumer sentiment and polling data about the economy becoming historically de-linked from official measures of economic health like GDP. It’s not our job to tell people how they should feel about the economy, but we can at least add some facts as context to common complaints.
Myth: “The economy is simply bad under the Biden administration”
In January 2020, the share of Americans saying that the U.S. economy was in “poor” shape was below 10%, but in recent months that share was above 40%. However, the unemployment rate in early 2020 and the middle of 2023 was essentially identical. The share of adults between the ages of 25 and 54 with a job was actually higher in the more recent period. Economic growth in the last quarter of 2019 was 2.6%, while it was 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023. The economy is growing (at least) as fast as it was pre-pandemic, and jobs are more plentiful.
This higher-pressure labor market has substantially eroded inequality in wages. Consider one metric of inequality—the ratio of the 90th-percentile wage (the wage earned by the worker who has higher pay than 90% of the workforce) to the 10th-percentile wage. Between 1980 and 2019, this ratio rose enormously by about 34%. But a full third of this 39-year increase has been erased in less than three years after 2019 because of rapid growth in pay for low-wage workers, which has not been a historical norm. If this inequality reduction sticks, it could well be the single most important development in the economy in decades.
The school bus driver shortage remains severe: Without job quality improvements, workers, children, and parents will suffer
When students returned to school in August and September, numerous media reports drew attention to school bus driver shortages across the country. The turbulence resulting from these shortages has at times been dramatic. In Louisville, Kentucky, school district leaders fumbled the rollout of an expensive new routing software intended to reduce the number of school bus drivers needed, leading to misplaced students and forcing the school district to halt classes for more than a week. Meanwhile, in New York City, the union contract for school bus drivers expired, with contentious negotiations resulting in a narrowly averted strike.
School bus drivers remain a vital part of the education system. Roughly half of school children rely on bus services to get to school. Interrupted services and instability can disrupt learning time and contribute to absenteeism. Reduced bus services can be a particularly challenging hurdle for children with disabilities, who sometimes travel far distances for specialized education. With many students and families already trying to recover from challenges and learning disruptions caused by the pandemic, it is more important than ever to have services as basic as bus transportation to school functioning effectively.
As some states attack child labor protections, other states are strengthening standards
Amid increasing child labor violations and ongoing attempts to roll back protections for child labor in states across the country, bills to strengthen protections in multiple states and at the federal level are a welcome and long-overdue development. State lawmakers have especially important roles to play in addressing the urgent need to protect youth workers in dangerous jobs like agriculture, meatpacking, and construction.
In the past two years, seven states have introduced bills to strengthen child labor protections and four have enacted them
In the past two years, seven states have introduced bills to strengthen protections for child labor and four have enacted them (Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, and California). In June 2023, Colorado enacted a law that allows a family to sue the employer of a child who was injured at work while employed in violation of the law. In September, Illinois passed a law mandating that child influencers and children who appear in their parents’ monetized digital content must be fairly compensated—the first of its kind in the nation. And in October, California’s governor signed into law a measure that will teach high school students about their workplace rights and right to join a union—also the first of its kind. Earlier this year, Arkansas passed a harmful bill eliminating youth work permits, which informed families of a child’s rights at work and provided documentation that can be used to aid compliance with the law. A week later—following a slew of negative press attention and alarm raised by child welfare advocates—Arkansas lawmakers passed a bill to increase penalties for child labor violations, though without adding any new enforcement funding or capacity.