0:17 Opening remarks – June 19, 1865

13:05 Shared by an attendee, Juneteenth: A Pastoral Reflection on Racial Justice

13:08 Roger Wilkins on the Kerner Commission

16:17 Roosevelt Institute’s The Good Life Agenda

16:25 Request from an attendee for book suggestion that outlines political debates on social welfare policies. Suggested by an attendee, The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

27:39 Read or download the full online introduction to Creating Justice in a Multiracial Democracy

28:46 Suggested by an attendee, Race Forward

37:43 A tale of 10 cities: Metro areas signal what’s at stake for Black Americans under Trump’s anti-equity agenda

41:45 For research on economic conditions and policies in the South, check out Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation: The failed Southern economic development model

46:13 Learn more about preemption in your area with our Preemption map

46:43 Follow minimum wage changes and trends across the country with our Minimum wage tracker

48:50 State unemployment by race and ethnicity

50:20 Valerie’s piece from earlier this year about Black women’s job losses, Black women suffered large employment losses in 2025—particularly among college graduates and public-sector workers and the companion piece with a broader look at Black employment under the second Trump administration, A snapshot of Black employment trends under Trump 2.0

51:42 Details on the attacks on the EEOC, Trump is making it easier for employers to discriminate. This stifles equity and hurts economic growth.

54:49 Kyle breaks down how white supremacy has always been used to usher in massive economic inequality with his piece, We’ve been here before, and we know what comes next

2:10 What is the current status of the minimum wage in the United States?

• Learn more about the origins of the minimum wage with A history of the federal minimum wage: 85 years later, the minimum wage is far from equitable
• How minimum wage lost its status as a tool of social progress in the U.S.

5:45 What are you proposing for the federal minimum wage?

• Patrick’s brief: Federal Employment Standards as the Foundation of Economic Security: Revisiting Minimum Wage, Just Cause, and Tools to Combat Wage Theft
• Ben’s report: Setting high standards for a federal minimum wage: Raising the wage to two-thirds of the national median wage would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers

9:50 Why two-thirds? Why not 1/2 or 90%? And how would that work exactly?

• Ben’s work on the CA fast food minimum raise impact: Adjusting minimum wages for inflation is a necessary yet modest step toward protecting affordability for low-wage workers.

17:40 What is a living wage, and what does that have to do with the minimum wage?

• Want to know what’s needed to achieve a basic standard of living in your area (or any other area in the U.S.)? Check out one of EPI’s most-used tools—the Family Budget Calculator.
• MIT’s living wage calculator
• Another resource for living wages.

23:10 In the absence of federal action, how are states and localities filling in the gap?

• You can find the minimum wage in states and localities with EPI’s Minimum Wage Tracker.
• Wondering how to approach raising the minimum wage in your state, county, or locality? Check out Holding the line: State solutions for the minimum wage.

27:01 Currently there is a ballot initiative in Oklahoma to raise the minimum wage to $15. How did that come about?

• Hard work deserves a fair wage. SQ 832 would help make that happen
• SQ 832: Minimum wage increase | Information and resources
• Tens of thousands of Oklahomans illegally paid below the minimum wage
• Oklahomans! The minimum wage ballot measure comes to a vote June 16, 2026.

31:52 Why doesn’t the minimum wage cause job losses? How do employers accommodate higher wage standards?

• Minimum wage simulation model technical methodology

36:59 A federal minimum wage increase would partially protect workers against business practices that suppress earnings and cause economic distress. What other policies would help?

• You can’t starve the public sector to excellence
• Holding the line: State solutions to wage theft and payment
• Unions aren’t just good for workers—they benefit communities and democracy

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Q&A

Have questions about AI’s impact on the workforce? See our webinar and resources here.

43:40 Oklahoma has successfully used the ballot measure to advance key policy. Why is that?

• The future of democracy rests in OK Supreme Court
• House ‘disappointed’ as Senate blocks bills, leaves Medicaid alone and most vetoes intact
• States revisit rules on citizen initiatives and referendums
• Citizen-led ballot initiatives face growing restrictions

47:50 How would a minimum wage at $20 by 2030 or $25/hr be phased in and what consideration should be given to small businesses?

49:30 What are some state specific analyses we can do to show that our state has capacity to dramatically increase the minimum wage? To what extent can this framework be applied to determine an ideal minimum wage by state (and by county)? Which measure/survey data are you referring to when talking about the “median wage”? Just curious about how we might do a similar comparison to our existing state minimum wage (in CO).

• State of Working America data library
• Colorado median real wage from the State of Working America data library

52:20 Will raising the minimum wage impact Social Security?

6:30 Tell us about EPI’s historical work in the education space – what has it focused on, why is it important, and how does it relate to today’s debates?

• Schools don’t exist separate from society – as society becomes less equal, non-school inputs into education get less equal.
• If we aspire to schools that are capable of ameliorating this inequality in non-school inputs and providing an equal educational opportunity to all, we need to be realistic about the scale of resources that requires.
• Richard Rothstein’s Class and Schools
• Education inequalities at the school starting gate

12:20 Pre-K is the number one aspirational policy goal for those looking to make public education more transformative going forward. What if we matched our rhetoric about how important young kids’ development was with action?

• Universal pre-K is by now incredibly well-researched and would provide large social gains.
• It would be essentially self-financing in the long-run.
• It’s a key acknowledgement that letting social inequalities go unaddressed by schooling for the first 5 years of kids’ lives is too long – it entrenches learning gaps that are deep and hard to fully close.
• Robert Lynch’s book, Enriching Kids, Enriching the Nation
• Education inequalities at the school starting gate
• It’s time for an ambitious national investment in America’s children
• Child care fact sheets

15:46 How sure are we about research showing that children’s education could benefit from increasing resources to schools, and how contested is that claim?

• New research turns over a previous conventional wisdom that the US spent “enough” on education has been pretty decisively overturned.
• In fact, more money does improve educational achievement for students and the improvement is largest for students in poor school districts.
• U.S. investment in public education is at risk

20:05 A new wave of research indicating large benefits from spending more on public education uses better research methods than what came before and manages to provide convincing causal evidence on this question of more money improving outcomes. Let’s walk through why this newer research is more convincing in its causal conclusions.

• New research scans for times when policy or something else has led to truly exogenous changes to spending – spending changes that are unrelated to pre-existing trends of levels of student achievement.

26:40 If the evidence is strong that greater spending would help students – is the policy following the evidence?

• No! The 2010s were such a disaster, COVID was welcome respite from those education spending trends. Many threats remain the on horizon.
• The biggest threats are the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and continued state-wide push for vouchers.

30:13 How does a lack of funding show up in classrooms?

• Insufficient teacher and staff pay leads to teacher and staff shortages.
• The teacher pay penalty reached a record high in 2024: Three decades of leaving public school teachers behind
• Today’s teacher shortage is the tip of the iceberg: Part 1 and Part 2
• The pandemic has exacerbated a long-standing national shortage of teachers

34:55 The teacher pay findings are so striking, particularly the really large decline since the 1990s – did we really used to pay our teachers a fully fair wage and have backslid this badly since then?

• This is a case study in how the need for resources for public education is inseparable from trends in the private economy.
• Teacher pay in the past was too-low relative to what would have been socially fair – but this was mostly because most teachers were women and all women’s pay was suppressed relative to men.
• But, low pay of teachers caused by generalized gender pay gaps meant that this low pay wasn’t as big a barrier for attracting talented teachers (again, mostly women) into the field.
• Today, women have fewer barriers to enter alternative occupations, but teacher pay has not kept pace with their wages gains in the private economy.
• Brief on factors impacting women and mothers’ labor force participation, Job quality is a policy decision

38:20 Thinking through the policy levers to address lots of these questions, the majority of education policy is managed locally, including funding, staffing, setting course curriculum and other school policies. How does the administration’s plan to essentially dismantle the Department of Education and “return education to the states” materially change what happens in schools?

• One of the primary purposes of the Department of Education is to ensure equal access to educational opportunities for all students. Dismantling the agency compromises two of the mechanisms for doing that — federal funding to under-resourced schools and enforcement of federal civil rights laws.
• A strong Department of Education is critical to public schools
• The limited capacity of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is being weaponized in support of the administration’s anti-DEI agenda. Threats to withhold funding from schools and districts deemed to be out of step with an extremely narrow view of civil rights that isare a departure from how the agency has operated for most of its existence.
• National Center for Education Statistics staffing and research grants have been cut severely. Those cuts abruptly halted much of the data collection that is critical to measuring many of the outcomes we’ve been discussing and to assessing how well the goal of equal access is being met.
• Trump administration is gutting the National Center for Education Statistics
• New research in Nature Communications on disparities in investment in children’s education in the U.S.

47:45 Talk through some of the potential harms of vouchers – particularly harms for kids who don’t use them and remain in public schools?

• Vouchers have direct costs to states. The state is now subsidizing kids to attend private school and now has fewer dollars to give to public school kids. Even worse, many of those being subsidized come from quite-affluent families.
• There is also an indirect cost for the students that remain in public school.
• How vouchers harm public schools
• Voucher programs fail rural schools
• U.S. Investment in public education is at risk
• Public education funding in the U.S. needs an overhaul

52:03 You talked about the under-recognized harms when vouchers lead to sharp changes in enrollment for public schools – are there other threats out there that could spark the same damaging dynamic?

• Any instance of a sharp change in enrollment for public schools could lead to these harms.
• Anti-immigrant efforts—particularly a move to overturn the 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler vs. Doe—could have huge unintended effects.

54:20 We talked earlier about the teacher pay penalty and how the wider labor market is really important for determining how we should think about the adequacy of society’s resources going into public education – is there another big example of how wider private-sector markets should influence how we think of education spending?

• Housing markets are deeply segregated by class and race – but we assign kids to public schools based on where their family lives.
• If you don’t account for this in education spending, you will allow huge resource gaps between kids’ schools to persist completely unaddressed.
• The Color of Law

1:52 What’s the EPI historical view on technology and the economy? And why is it important to be clear about whether we think technology itself is the culprit for the problems workers face in our economy?

• EPI was essentially created to give a critical perspective on the conventional wisdom about technology and the economy
• Our work emphasized that policies and political institutions were far more important to the distribution of income and wages than technology – this was the exact opposite of lots of conventional wisdom. Since then, the world has moved our way on this question – until AI.
• Unbalanced labor market power is what makes technology—including AI—threatening to workers. The best “AI policy” to protect workers is boosting their bargaining position

5:51 What’s your alarm level on AI and its potential labor market effects and generally why is that? To set some parameters for this conversation: we are talking today really about AI and the economy, workers, and the labor market and those concerns specifically.

• Alarm level is pretty low – until proven otherwise, it’s one more technological shock hitting the US economy – but we’re hit by those all the time
• Technology tends to determine pace of overall growth and be good for that – it mostly does not determine the distribution of this growth – that’s determined by policies and institutions
• American policies and institutes for distributing growth equitably and making sure jobs have decent pay and working conditions are weak and bad – but they were weak and bad before AI.
• Not a lot of reason why AI will make this worse. If alarm about AI somehow leverages some political momentum to make these broader changes, great. It seems that more of the policy debate is not doing this but is trying to come up with tailored and AI-specific interventions.

11:44 How is AI affecting the U.S. economy?

• One is short-run macroeconomic effects based on spending flows associated with AI. We can be pretty precise and confident about this
• Longer-run effects on productivity and the labor market implications as AI either augments or replaces labor are highly uncertain – but today there is likely too much hyperbole about those.

13:50 What is the short-run macroeconomic effect of AI?

• There are two effects – capex (building data centers) and consumption fueled by stock bubble
• Capex effect smaller – not what you might guess from some commentary
• Together they’re about ½ of growth we saw in 2025

16:35 AI-related spending accounted for ½ of growth in 2025 – that means it’s good? Or not?

• It was a lucky macro card drawn by the Trump administration, for sure. Fallout of other policy choices have likely been masked by this AI spending surge
• This inflated spending is a narrow and fragile base of growth to rely on going forward
• It’s not too early to think through the recession playbook

19:30 There has been a lot of news coverage/attention given to AI-related spending. Does this wave of AI-related spending already make this the most economically significant burst of technology the US economy has ever seen? Where does this stack up vs. Technological changes in recent history?

• Both the late 1990s stock market bubble and capex associated with internet buildout were much bigger
• Real effects of that earlier period of tech-related spending turned out to be really significant in terms of productivity and other things; remains to be seen now

21:53 How should we organize our thoughts about AI and jobs?

• It is worth being very specific:
  • are we worried about overall, net job-loss in the economy (ie, a much higher unemployment rate)?
  • Or are we worried about lots of short-run churn (some occupations contract and others expand and there are transitional issues)?
  • Or are we worried that the job shifts of AI will leave some workers hard-pressed to find as-good jobs elsewhere in the economy without taking big wage cuts?
• We’re not very worried about overall net job-loss
• We are ALWAYS worried about churn and job-shifts – our country is unique among rich ones in hanging people out to dry when the labor market shifts beneath their feet

26:30 So the real story about jobs is how much AI might replace workers in specific occupations and the scale of the resulting flux in the labor market – what do we know about this scale of gross job destruction so far? In particular, there’s a lot of attention given to what’s happening to young workers, specifically young college graduates seeking entry-level white-collar jobs, and what’s happening to tech jobs in programming, etc.

• Direct studies of this are fairly neutral
• There is a general tendency to overread very ancillary data points
• It’s likely there is also a bit of “AI-washing” right now
• Class of 2026: Young college graduates face a more mixed labor market than headlines suggest

34:10 Given what we know about AI and our best guesses about how it will effect the economy, what should policymakers be doing now? There have been a lot of different proposals put forward in Congress at the federal level – some pretty sweeping, some that might not actually change that much. And there’s also a lot of activity at the state and local level, which is where most actual AI policy or regulation has actually passed.

• Action you take depends on what angle of rise from AI is concerning you
• Most of what should be done is focusing on all the broad policy areas where we’ve lagged behind and hurt workers
• Also, ensure that AI is not used as an excuse to further gut the capacity of the public sector

36:22 How do you put a check on AI companies or processes of implementation? How would that work?

• Implement a “token tax” to slow usage of and demand for AI
• Federal legislation that mandates data center companies make a net positive contribution, say to the electrical grid or water processing, to the locality they build in.

39:52 Say you’re worried that the next decade is going to be one of rapid AI implementation and poor labor market performance for many workers – what policies should you focus on then?

• Workers need policies that level the fundamental imbalances in power that afflict them when they try to bargain for higher wages against employers who are using every tool at their disposal – including technology and AI – to disempower workers
• From the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center, Negotiating Tech: An Inventory of U.S. Union Contract Provisions for the Digital Age

44:05 AI and the public sector: what policy can head off the harms of AI implementation?

• The US public sector has been cut extensively in recent decades
• The dysfunction associated with public services is not a sign of a powerful bureaucracy that is unresponsive to the public. It’s a hyper-responsive civil service utterly overwhelmed and falling back on hoping that process can substitute for active decision-making
• The public sector has no market test to drive hiring or service—it is entirely politics-driven. A choice.
• It’s never too early to be recession-planning

48:06 Say you’re wrong about the “normality” of AI as a technology and say that it does lead to unprecedented job-loss and devaluation of labor. What could we do to prepare for that?

• Whoever owns the AI or the businesses whose capital has become much more productive due to AI gets the benefits while everybody else loses
• Ownership has to be redistributed

51:07 What about the issue of AI exposure on the job? For instance, people having tools or software pushed on them, that may make their jobs less safe?

• Biggest solution is having a functional labor law where workers can organize and represent themselves at the workplace to ensure they are compensated appropriately for the difficult work they endure

54:10 There seems to be a lot of federal inaction on this. What is being done or can be done on the state level?

• Pre-emption is the biggest concern here.

2:39 We are through the first year of the Trump administration. What’s the big picture on policy changes they’ve undertaken over that time?

The Trump administration’s macroeconomic agenda harms affordability and raises inequality

Tariffs—Everything you need to know but were afraid to ask

The macroeconomics of the Trump administration

6:54 What are some key economic outcomes of the first year we should know about?

For more on the race between income, or pay, and prices, check out our Affordability webinar, What’s missing from the affordability debate?

10:01 Can you say more about what the delayed effect of some of Trump’s policies might be on economic outcomes as we move forward?

How Trump has dismantled the federal workforce in his first 100 days

You can’t starve the public sector to excellence

13:42 What role has immigration policy played in measurable trends over the past year, and what effects should we expect from it going forward?

16:44 Sometimes we hear that this immigration policy has led to greater opportunities for U.S.-born workers. Is there any truth to that?

Unemployment has increased for U.S.-born workers in the face of mass deportations

19:47 Where does AI fit into what’s happening in the U.S. economy over the past year?

How AI spending is impacting the U.S. economy

AI Adoption and Firms’ Job-Posting Behavior

24:10 You’ve mentioned the conflict with Iran a couple of times. What can we expect in terms of the effect of this on U.S. economic outcomes in the next 6-12 months?

31:01 Are you still seeing evidence of a K-shaped economy?

33:30 What is the current state of the productivity-pay gap, and where do you see it heading in the age of AI?

The productivity-pay gap

36:46 Can you compare U.S. economic performance to other countries’ economies?

Supporting manufacturing employment

40:46 Why are states like Texas so reluctant to raise the minimum wage and address affordable housing?

Minimum Wage Tracker

43:15 If incomes lag inflation, will that affect performance of housing, consumer, and student load debt? And if so, what are the likely knock-on effects?

46:51 A large percentage of U.S. G.D.P is from money spent by the top 5 or so percent of income earners. What happens when they pull back on spending?

48:36 The unemployment gap seems to be narrowing greatly between recent college graduates and other workers. Why is that the case? Is AI driving that?

50:52 How reliable is the data from the federal government, and what other sources are available for economic analysis?

53:51 Is there data to show what percent of consumer growth is based on credit card debt? How much longer can consumers support shopping with debt, and are defaults growing?

1:49 Introduction

Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) website
EARN network directory of partners in your state

Holding the Line: State solutions to the U.S. workers’ rights crisis

Child labor

Health and safety

Minimum wage

Nondiscrimination

Overtime pay

Unemployment insurance

Union rights

Wage payment

5:34 EPI tracking Trump administration attacks on working people and unions

Celine McNicholas, EPI Direct of Policy and Government Affairs

Latest EPI analysis of the annual union membership data, Workers’ resolve drives unionization in 2025

Federal Policy Watch

Unions aren’t just good for workers—they also benefit communities and democracy

Trump is the biggest union-buster in U.S. history

Find all of EPI’s work on Unions and Labor Standards

22:30 Collective bargaining rights in Virginia

Levi Goren, Director of Research and Education Policy, The Commonwealth Institute.
Levi/they leads TCI’s analysis and advocacy work on education, safety net programs, and macroeconomic conditions in Virginia, making sure the strongest analysis is brought to bear on key issues facing communities of color and low-income families. Outside of paid work, Levi has worked on grassroots social and economic justice campaigns.

Angel Pye, Executive Board member, SEIU Local 512 Home Care Chapter.
A former mental health professional who transitioned to full-time caregiving for her late son, Angel now uses her experience to fight for collective bargaining rights to ensure all home care workers receive the dignity, respect, and living wages they deserve.

Stronger collective bargaining laws will benefit all Virginians

34:24 Fighting wage theft and defending state labor standards in Ohio

Ali Smith, Senior Project Coordinator, Policy Matters Ohio.
Ali Smith leads the Work & Wages team at Policy Matters Ohio. She was born and raised in Ohio, in a family supported and empowered by union steelwork, and previously spent eight years as a childcare provider — experience that continues to shape her approach to worker justice and to drive her research. Ali guides organizational campaigns and strategy, driving major initiatives and advocacy efforts to advance policy goals for workers across Ohio. Ali also serves as president of the Central Ohio Worker Center’s board of directors.

Isbel Alvarado, Case Manager and Community Organizer, Central Ohio Worker Center.
Isbel has worked with immigrants and low-wage workers on employment rights violations including wage theft and related issues that particularly affect low-wage and immigrant workers. Isbel has strengthened partnerships with government agencies and community organizations, trained thousands of workers on their rights in the workplace and was instrumental in the successful campaign that led to Ohio passing the Paystub Protection Act in 2025, requiring all employers to provide paystubs to their employees.

45:39 Washington state fighting for collective bargaining rights for farmworkers

Kaitie Dong, Senior Policy Analyst, Washington State Budget and Policy Center.
Kaitie (she/her) leads the Budget and Policy Center’s immigrant justice policy analysis and advocacy. As a lifelong Washingtonian and granddaughter of Chinese immigrants, Kaitie is inspired by her family and community to advance immigrant rights and racial justice. Kaitie is passionate about relationship building and education and her work has included building leadership of immigrant youth in WA state and advancing policy campaigns focused on keeping immigrant families together, tenants’ rights, language access in K-12 schools, and early learning.

Edgar Franks, Political Director for the independent union of farm workers, Familias Unidos por la Justicia.
Edgar keeps members informed of legislation and laws affecting rural people and immigrants. His past work has included supporting organizing efforts of fruit processing workers and helping farmworkers win 2021 legislation (Senate Bill 5172) to extend overtime pay to all agricultural workers. And he represents the union in other national and international alliances. He also serves on the Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce Services Advisory Committee to provide oversight on the H2A program in Washington State and recommendations to state agencies.

3:44 Trump’s actions are actually lowering wages and economic security, and weakening workers’ rights

47 ways Trump has made life less affordable in the last year 

4:15  What does affordability really mean in economic debates?

9:12  What is affordability so stick in this moment?

13:56 Why is it a risk to focus too much on prices?

18:06 What does the affordability challenge look like for different groups of workers, different types of families and households?

21:39 What can states be doing to address affordability? What are real policy solutions in the absence of meaningful federal action?

26:32 How does the expiration of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits factor into the affordability debate? Where do discussions of policies like public health, and a public childcare provision, fit in?

Ending ACA tax credits would impose high costs on Black Americans in 10 major metro areas 

30:33 What can be done in the short term on housing costs?

39:48 What is antitrust? Why do some people talk about antitrust as a way to reduce prices?

43:01 How are tariffs impacting prices?

Everything you need to know about tariffs but were afraid to ask

45:15 How much do families or workers need in different parts of the country for things to be affordable?

Family Budget Calculator

Family Budget customizable fact sheets

Family Budget map

Family Budget full downloadable dataset

What constitutes a living wage: A guide to using EPI’s Family Budget Calculator 

49:09 How do regulations or policy proposals that affect price gouging or profit-seeking behaviors by corporations fit into the discussion of affordability?

51:49 Is there a concern that increasing wages will increase prices, especially food prices, or make affordability difficult for other people?

54:05 What is the historical perspective, such as “trickle down” or neo-liberal economics, on wages?

55:28 Can you explain the K-shaped economy?