Data sources: Economic Policy Institute, Family Budget Calculator, 2026 edition (county data); Child Care Aware affordability data; Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.
Investopedia
October 22, 2026
In The New York Times, the estimable Steven Erlanger has a smart explainer piece on this dynamic. Complementing his own excellent analysis, Erlanger quotes the Nobel laureate MIT economist Daron Acemoglu pointing out that the traditional moderate left got sidetracked with elite cultural issues and ignored its working-class base. “The centerpiece has to be creating jobs and wage growth and career paths for people without college degrees and diverse skills,” Acemoglu told Erlanger in an interview.
I can’t resist adding that when writers in The American Prospect, or our friends at the Economic Policy Institute, keep pointing this out (over decades), it’s not a story. When a prominent mainstream economist finally figures it out, it’s worth a Nobel.
The American Prospect
October 22, 2026
There is a warning here. The Economic Policy Institute has documented a widening national gap between productivity and compensation for a typical worker over recent decades. If construction allows technology to boost output without workers sharing in those gains, we risk reproducing the same disconnect other industries are still struggling to address.
Construction Dive
October 22, 2026
In an email, EPI Chief Economist Josh Bivens told Jacobin that the fall in the labor share and the growing inequality within it both stem from excess employer power in the labor market and decades of wage suppression. “Basically, I think a set of policies aimed at wage suppression have successfully slowed wage growth for the vast majority of workers,” Bivens said, “and this left a large and growing ‘excess’ wedge of income that went to much more privileged actors in the economy.”
…
Whether it flowed to executives or shareholders, this redistribution of income has been a driving force behind the rapid growth of both income and wealth inequality over the last half century. As Bivens and EPI President Heidi Shierholz point out in a recent essay, estimates suggest that “anywhere from 40 percent to nearly 100 percent” of the nominal gains in the stock market since 1989 can be attributed to capital’s growing share of the national income.
Jacobin
October 22, 2026
Along with facing rising childcare costs, workers have also seen slowing wage growth, heightening the financial pressure on many families, Economic Policy Institute economist Elise Gould told CBS News.
CBS Moneywatch
October 22, 2026
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute reveals that mass deportation operations represent an expenditure of over $268 billion in the United States. Attorney Jaime Vázquez analyzes how recent regulations impose an average cost of $2,000 in taxes on each taxpayer. Learn which states contribute the most funds to these immigration policies and the debate surrounding the reallocation of resources earmarked for infrastructure, health, and education.
N+ Univision
October 22, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute said the Trump plan would “strip resources from low-income working families,” and that paying benefits to stay-at-home parents when CCDF is already underfunded “hits low-income families, families with infants and toddlers, and families headed by single parents the hardest.”
Baptist News Global
October 22, 2026
Powers: According to the Economic Policy Institute, worker pay hasn’t kept up with inflation since the 1970s. Incomes for the top 1 percent have risen almost five times faster than the bottom 90 percent.
Milwaukee NPR
October 22, 2026
According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEOs at the 350 largest publicly traded U.S. companies earned 281 times as much as a typical worker in 2024, compared with 21 times as much in 1965.
Katie Couric Substack
October 22, 2026
Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, told USA TODAY something else may also be at play in the September results.
“It could be just the fact that we’re dealing with a smaller sample size for the survey and, depending on who responds, how many people respond to the survey, that also can create some noise in terms of the measurement,“ Wilson said. “But the 2 to 1 disparity is almost always present, whether things are booming or not.”
USA Today
October 22, 2026