The estate tax should help to level the playing field. Instead it’s letting the rich get richer.
This is an excerpt from an op-ed that originally published in CNN. Read the full op-ed here.
The federal estate tax should be an effective tool to slightly level the playing field between those who inherit wealth and those who have to work for a living. It should also ensure that family dynasties who’ve amassed enormous fortunes pay their fair share in taxes.
But because policymakers have repeatedly doubled and tripled the immense sums that can be passed on before the tax kicks in, the estate tax today affects almost no one.
The estate tax exemption—the value of an estate that a mega-millionaire can own before facing taxes—has grown so much over the past quarter century that just eight of every 10,000 people who died in 2019 left behind an estate that was large enough to be subject to the tax, currently at 40%.
Gender wage gap persists in 2023: Women are paid roughly 22% less than men on average
March 12 is Equal Pay Day, a reminder that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2024 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2023 simply to match what men were paid in 2023. Women were paid 21.8% less on average than men in 2023, after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, and geographic division.
There has been little progress in narrowing this gender wage gap over the past three decades, as shown in Figure A. While the pay gap declined between 1979 and 1994—due to men’s stagnant wages, not a tremendous increase in women’s wages—it has remained mostly flat since then.
February jobs report: The labor market is strong—but decidedly not overheating as wage growth continues to moderate
Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 275,000 jobs added in February.
What’s behind the corporate effort to kneecap the National Labor Relations Board?: SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks are trying to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional—after collectively being charged with hundreds of violations of workers’ organizing rights
Workers want unions now more than they have in a generation. Evidence suggests more than 60 million non-union workers would like a union at their workplace. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the agency established by Congress in 1935 to protect workers’ organizing rights—is handling more union representation elections and unfair labor practice charges than they have in years.
So how have companies responded to this surge in worker organizing?
Some have honored their workers’ choice and tried to start a positive labor-management relationship, as Microsoft, New Flyer, Ben & Jerry’s, and other companies have done. These companies see the value of a constructive relationship with their employees to their bottom line.
Others have taken the opposite tack—to the extreme. Led by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and joined by Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks, these companies are engaged in a legal battle trying to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional, by resurfacing long-rejected constitutional arguments about the agency’s structure. If they succeed, it would kneecap the agency and its operations at the very time workers need it the most.
Why are these companies taking this scorched-earth approach? What is motivating these attacks?
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey: Labor market remains strong—but not hot
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for January. Read the full thread here.
Today’s JOLTS report reflects the revisions that were made to the CES employment data in their annual benchmarking process. According to their comparison tables found in the report (see https://t.co/dXEZgZoGFw), revised rates were little changed from the original data reported.
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) March 6, 2024
As with the hires rate, the quits rate ticked down a bit. The fast churn in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic recession is behind us, but higher quits indicate a labor market where workers are more confident about other job opportunities so this is a key indicator to watch. pic.twitter.com/KIucF8zX4F
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) March 6, 2024
Even with the softening in hires through January 2024, the hires rate still remains above the quits rate in every sector according to the latest data. Some workers are still quitting in search of better opportunities but the labor market is decidedly not hot. pic.twitter.com/yHIDcwN9BN
— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) March 6, 2024
Immigrants are not hurting U.S.-born workers: Six facts to set the record straight
The immigrant share of the labor force reached a record high of 18.6% in 2023, according to our analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.1 Anti-immigration advocates have been out in full force, using this as a talking point for deeply misguided commentary and analysis that roughly translates to “immigrants are taking all our jobs.”
The reality is that the economy does not have a fixed number of jobs, and what we see today is a growing economy that is adding jobs for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers. Here are six key facts that show immigrants are not hurting the employment outcomes of U.S.-born workers.
Data show anti-union ‘right-to-work’ laws damage state economies: As Michigan’s repeal takes effect, New Hampshire should continue to reject ‘right-to-work’ legislation
Key findings:
- Data show that states with so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws have lower unionization rates, wages, and benefits compared with non-RTW states.
- On average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.
- Claims that weakening unions will lead to state job growth have proven inaccurate. There are no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.
This week, Michigan’s 2023 repeal of a so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) law takes effect. Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s state legislature is once again debating a RTW bill at a moment when it could not be clearer that RTW laws damage states’ economies by accelerating income inequality and reducing job quality, without delivering any job growth.
RTW laws—and the phrase “right to work” itself—are intended to deceive and confuse. The misleadingly named policy is designed to make it more difficult for workers to form and sustain unions and negotiate collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1961, “right to work” is a “false slogan” since RTW laws provide neither rights nor work and are in fact designed “to rob us of our civil rights and job rights [and] to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.” Decades later, research bears out King’s contention that “wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower.”
RTW laws are historically rooted in racism and designed to maintain unequal power. When private-sector workers first gained legal protection to unionize following passage of the federal National Labor Relations Act in 1935, unionization rates grew quickly. In response, opponents waged anti-union, explicitly white supremacist campaigns to limit worker power and maintain Jim Crow labor relations. These campaigns pursued state legislation as a means to constrain workers’ newly won federal union rights via RTW policies, and especially to block multiracial union organizing. RTW laws have since spread to 27 states and continue to generate economic outcomes that disadvantage all workers.
Child labor remains a key state legislative issue in 2024: State lawmakers must seize opportunities to strengthen standards, resist ongoing attacks on child labor laws
Child labor remains a top issue in 2024 state legislative sessions amid soaring violations and widespread abuse of child labor laws in multiple sectors of the economy. On one hand, the coordinated, industry-backed effort to roll back child labor protections state by state has continued to expand. At the same time, some state legislators are proposing legislation to strengthen the rights of young workers and the laws designed to safeguard their health and education.
Since 2021, 28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them. By contrast, 14 states have introduced bills to strengthen child labor protections already in 2024—up from 11 states in all of 2023—as more state lawmakers recognize the need to address increasing violations and threats to current state and federal standards.
A strong labor market continues into 2024 with 353,000 jobs added in January
Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 353,000 jobs added in January.
The soft bigotry of high expectations: To combat the Black-white school achievement gap, remedy persistent segregation, don’t hope for miracle teachers
Social psychologist Robert Rosenthal died at the age of 90 this month. He was best known for his 1968 book, Pygmalion in the Classroom, co-authored by Lenore Jacobson, an elementary school principal in South San Francisco.
No book in the second half of the 20th century did more, unintentionally perhaps, to undermine support for public education, and thus diminish educational opportunities for so many children, especially Black and Hispanic children, to this day. The book and its aftermath put the onus solely on teacher performance when it came to student achievement, disregarding so many critically important socioeconomic factors—at the top of the list, residential segregation.
How did it do that?
The book described an experiment conducted in Ms. Jacobson’s school in 1965. The authors gave pupils an IQ test and then randomly divided the test takers into two groups. They falsely told teachers that results showed that students in one of the groups were poised to dramatically raise their performance in the following year, while the others would not likely demonstrate similar improvement.
At the end of that year, they tested students again and found that the first and second graders in the group that was predicted to improve did so on average, while those in the other group did not. The book, as well as academic articles that Dr. Rosenthal and Ms. Jacobson published, claimed that the experiment showed that teacher expectations had a powerful influence on student achievement, especially of young children. Pupils whose teachers were told were more likely to improve then apparently worked harder to meet their teachers’ faith in them.1
Some psychologists were skeptical, believing that the experimental design was not sufficiently rigorous to support such a revolutionary conclusion. Even the reported results were ambiguous. Teacher expectations had no similar impact on children in grades three through six. Similar experiments elsewhere did not confirm the results even for first and second graders.2
Nonetheless, the book was very influential.