According to the BLS and the Economic Policy Institute’s Current Population Survey:
• 43 percent or 16.3 million of all 16-24-year-old kids are not in school.
• 31 percent of high school students don’t attend college, and of those who do go to college, 40 percent don’t finish.
• Of those who do graduate from college, 37 percent are in jobs that only require a high school diploma.
• The average hourly wage for a college graduate is $20.37 ($42,000 per year).
• Today, over seven million job openings exist in the economy, 75% of which don’t require a college degree. The average pay for those jobs is $55,000 per year.
Distribution Contractors Association
August 23, 2019
Perhaps the most significant consequences, though, are those that manifest themselves in the years that follow. As a 2009 report published by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute puts it, no recession is really a “one-time” event, since “economic hardships for parents will mean more economic hurdles for their children,” too. Things like extended periods of joblessness, abandoned education plans, and inadequate access to health care all create lingering costs that the economy will still be repaying long after the recession is officially over.
GQ
August 23, 2019
While there’s plenty of research to show investments in infrastructure would certainly boost the economy and increase jobs — especially an investment as large as Sanders is proposing — the actual long term impacts of the levels of labor demand are harder to project, according to a 2014 study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
VOX
August 23, 2019
A la Carta
August 23, 2019
In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute released a report which found that American employers are stealing about $15 billion from workers’ paychecks every year. That study, along with various other reports of growing abuse, has resulted in calls for reform.
FindLaw
August 23, 2019
That widening gulf might be reflected in this new report from the Economic Policy Institute, which showed that, from “1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% [valued based on when options granted] (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9.
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
August 23, 2019
Here’s a statistic that should bother us all: According to the Economic Policy Institute, compensation for CEOs has risen over 800 percent from 1978 to 2016. That far outpaces the growth of the stock market during that period. And worse, during that same time, the typical worker’s annual compensation rose a paltry 11.2 percent.
Hawaii Catholic Herald
August 23, 2019
The Star Tribune missed an opportunity to achieve balanced reporting in “Worker pay stagnates as it soars for CEOs” (August 19). The article amounted to an uncritical summary of a report produced by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute, without any alternative research or viewpoints.
First, the piece failed to reveal the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is largely funded and run by labor unions and left-wing academics. EPI is described as a nonprofit think tank “that focuses on low- and middle-income Americans,” language lifted almost word-for-word from their website.
Star Tribune
August 23, 2019
If you are an average American worker, you’ve seen the buying power of your wages remain flat since 1973, while earners in the top 10% have seen their wages grow at five times the rate of those in the bottom half. Since 1978, in actual dollars (not inflation-adjusted), the average American worker has seen wages increase by just 12%. CEOs, meanwhile, have seen their compensation grow by 940% in the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Enid News & Eagle
August 23, 2019
Generous stock options have helped boost CEO pay by a whopping 940 percent since 1978, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while wages for a typical worker grew only 12 percent during the same period.
Houston Chronicle
August 23, 2019
Valerie Wilson, director of Economic Policy Institute’s Program of Race, Ethnicity and the Economy says Black women are experiencing a pay gap on the basis of both gender and race.
“We know that there is a racial wage gap that exists on average between Black workers and white workers, but then on top of that, Black women have the added penalty imposed by gender. There is also a gender gap,” she said.
The Philadelphia Tribune
August 23, 2019
According to a study by The Economic Policy Institute, union membership is one of the key factors that can help determine if black women are paid fairly for their work:
“Black women have traditionally faced a double pay gap—a gender pay gap and a racial wage gap. EPI research has shown that black women are paid only 65 cents of the dollar that their white male counterparts are paid. However, unions help reduce these pay gaps. Working black women in unions are paid 94.9 percent of what their black male counterparts make, while nonunion black women are paid just 91 percent of their counterparts.”
UFCW
August 23, 2019
Average CEO pay in the U.S. in 1978 was $1.7 million. Adjusted for inflation, it was $17 million last year, a 10x increase, according to a new report by Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe at the Economic Policy Institute (h/t Ian Bremmer).
Axios
August 23, 2019
At the same time, the number of teacher vacancies have exceeded 100,000 jobs in the past four years, said Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute. She said school budgets had been slow to recover from the last recession, while a relatively robust economy today offers better paying career options that have deterred many would-be teachers.
“It helped exacerbate the teacher shortage and put more pressure on states,” Weiss said.
AP
August 23, 2019
As students, parents, and educators enter the start of a new school year, the think tank Economic Policy Institute published an analysis Thursday that American K-12 public school teachers spend an average of $459 on classroom supplies for which they are not reimbursed.
“This figure does not include the dollars teachers spend but are reimbursed for by their school districts,” EPI economist Emma García wrote in a blog post. “The $459-per-teacher average is for all teachers, including the small (4.9 percent) share who do not spend any of their own money on school supplies.”
Common Dreams
August 23, 2019
— The Economic Policy Institute says in a new analysis that teachers in at least one state spend more than $600 on average of their own money on classroom supplies.
PAYING FOR CLASSROOM SUPPLIES: Are teachers pulling out their checkbooks as the school year gets underway? New data out today by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute suggests that’s likely the case. The state-by-state analysis finds that teachers in North Dakota spend on average $327 of their own money on classroom supplies — the lowest, on average. In comparison, California teachers, who are on the high end, spend $664.
Politico
August 23, 2019
The growing shortfall is well documented. The Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., reports that the shortage of teachers nationwide from preschool through high school worsened from 64,000 in the 2015-2016 academic year to 110,000 just two years later. The agency projects the shortfall will reach at least 200,000 by 2025.
EdPrepMatters
August 23, 2019
Meanwhile, the pay gap between teachers and other comparably educated professionals is now the largest on record. In 1994, public-school teachers in the U.S. earned 1.8% less per week than comparable workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. By last year, they made 18.7% less. The situation is particularly grim in states such as Oklahoma, where teachers’ inflation-adjusted salaries actually decreased by about $8,000 in the last decade, to an average of $45,245 in 2016, according to DOE data. In Arizona, teachers’ average inflation-adjusted annual wages are down $5,000.
Time
August 23, 2019
Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute is cited in The Atlantic article by Hanauer. In it, Mishel chastises conservatives for failing to address inequality. He states they focus instead on what they call “the opportunity gap.”
TheChattanoogan.com
August 23, 2019
WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Economic Policy Institute published a report showing teachers spend an average of $459 on school supplies out of their own pockets:
“There is no other profession I can think of where workers, as a matter of culture and practice, are relied upon to subsidize an employer’s costs just so they can do their jobs. But teachers want what kids need, so each year they buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of supplies for their students without a second thought—even though they are paid over 20 percent less than similarly skilled professionals.
AFT
August 23, 2019
Others will be watching for how companies deal with their employees, given the statement’s commitment to compensating and supporting workers. Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said he would be looking for a shift in how big corporate CEOs are willing to engage with unions and work with employees toward a new system of collective bargaining.
“What would be really my most hopeful moment would be if these CEOs expressed a recognition of the importance of worker voice and their own workers to be able to bargain collectively,” Mishel said.
The Washington Post
August 22, 2019
Pointing to research from the think tank Economic Policy Institute which shows that “since the 1970s, declining unionization has fueled rising inequality and stalled economic progress for the broad American middle class,” Sanders aims to reverse that national trend with a new plan that builds on legislation the Independent senator from Vermont initially introduced in 1992.
Common Dreams
August 22, 2019
Unionized workers are afforded around a 22% wage premium compared to non-union workers. A 2003 paper published by the Economic Policy Institute found even non-unionized workers benefited from wage increases based on the percentage of unionization within their industry.
The Guardian
August 22, 2019
The national Economic Policy Institute estimated in July that 652,000 Kentuckians — 35% of the workforce — would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, as proposed in the federal Raise the Wage Act.
Pugel said such an increase would most benefit women and minorities statewide, as well as workers in Eastern Kentucky. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that about 40% of workers in that region would receive a salary increase.
Courier Journal
August 22, 2019
The serving workforce remains a microcosm of pay disparities in the broader economy. According to 2011–2013 data from the Economic Policy Institute, people of color make up nearly 40% of the workforce that falls under federal tipped-minimum-wage rules, which includes nail-salon workers and car-wash attendants. The flexibility of restaurant work is in part why more than a million single mothers are on the job. After eight years working at the 24-hour diner, Munce, 32, mostly gets the shifts that she wants–working breakfast and lunch and leaving by 3 p.m. when her daughter gets out of school–so for that, she’s grateful. When her daughter got bullied at school and Munce had to pick her up, Munce was able to get other waitresses to cover for her without getting in trouble for calling off work–though of course this also meant she didn’t get paid. When her daughter was younger and Munce couldn’t find anyone to watch her, she’d bring her daughter to the diner and have her sit quietly in a booth with crayons.
Time
August 22, 2019
While gig workers make up one-fifth of the workplace (or more) at a number of companies polled in a recent survey, some research has suggested that the gig economy is contracting rather than expanding. Workers were more likely to be in standard jobs in 2017 than in 2005, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). In 2005, 10.9% of workers were in nonstandard jobs, compared to 10.1% in 2017, EPI concluded.
HR Dive
August 22, 2019
For instance, 185 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of four is $47,638, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However $96,047 per year is the estimated wage a family of two adults and two children would need to make to afford a modest two bedroom apartment, childcare, and other costs in the Portland metro area, according to the family budget calculator of Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank addressing the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.
The Portland Observer
August 22, 2019
Workers in communities across the country have to work a second or third job to support themselves and their families — a result of a lack of good jobs that pay a living wage with benefits. Real wages have barely grown over the last forty years and almost a quarter of workers don’t earn enough to keep a family out of poverty. And while President Trump brags about how low the headline unemployment rate is, he fails to mention that the Black unemployment rate is nearly twice as high as the white unemployment rate and the share of prime-age Americans with a job is still below its peak in the 2000s.
Medium
August 22, 2019
An analysis released Aug. 14 by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that chief executive compensation had grown 940 percent since 1978, by one measure, while typical worker compensation had risen just 12 percent over the same period.
The Washington Post
August 22, 2019
A study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute released earlier this year indicated that compensation for America’s top CEOs increased 940% between 1978 and 2018, while the average worker salary rose 12% over the same 40-year period. Wage growth of very high earners in that period rose about 339.2% during that time.
GM Authority
August 22, 2019