Rising inflation has put a dent in public school teachers’ salaries nationwide, according to recent research by the Economic Policy Institute. At the same time, districts like Portland Public Schools are having trouble meeting teachers’ financial needs.
K-12 Dive
November 28, 2023
Meanwhile, a concerted effort to loosen or abolish regulations around children in the workforce is under way across the country. Republicans are pushing to loosen child labour laws in at least 16 states, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
November 28, 2023
“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,” Bivens recently wrote in a blog post.
The 10th-percentile hourly wage was $12.57 in 2022, up 9% during that three-year period, he noted. “If this inequality reduction sticks, it could well be the single most important development in the economy in decades,” Bivens said.
CBS Moneywatch
November 28, 2023
Maryland and many other states now have laws on the books that
require minimum wages to rise along with inflation. Maryland leaders recognized that the $15 minimum unions and worker advocates campaigned for a decade ago no longer goes far enough, said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, a research assistant for the Economic Analysis and Research Network at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
“What they thought $15 an hour would achieve no longer has that same
purchasing power,” Hickey said. “A lot of other states are going to be
making a similar calculation in the next couple of years.”
It would take about $20 today to buy what $15 could buy 10 years ago,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. EPI backs raising the federal
minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2028.
Pluribus News
November 28, 2023
US law hamstrings organising efforts because it allows employers to punish union leaders with minimal consequences and to hold mandatory meetings where workers must listen to anti-union messages, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Earlier UAW efforts to organise in the south met defeat at Nissan’s plant in Mississippi and VW’s in Tennessee, while in February, 18 workers at Tesla said they were fired for organising a union drive.
Financial Times
November 28, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly half of U.S. employers are charged with violating federal law in union election campaigns, from illegally firing workers to coercing and threatening workers. Some employers, flush with enough cash, hire professional union-busters to water down pro-union support within the workforce.
Orlando Weekly
November 28, 2023
The U.S. Department of Labor, which investigated those three businesses, found a 37% national increase in the number of minors whose employment has violated federal labor laws in some way since 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Salt Lake Tribune
November 28, 2023
Behn noted a recent progressive Economic Policy Institute report showed more than 60% of corporations filing in Tennessee pay “zero in state corporate income tax,” a figure she said includes “27% of all billion-dollar corporations.”
Chattanooga Times Free Press
November 28, 2023
On average, teachers earn 23.5% less than comparable college graduates, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
November 28, 2023
And these contracts are also a sign that employers could have been paying workers more all along, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a union-supported think tank.
“What we’ve seen until the recent period is a real imbalance of power has allowed employers to set wages at a level below what their revenue and profits could bear,” she said. “We’re seeing some reversal of that right now.”
“I think there is a momentum aspect of this,” said EPI’s Shierholz. “The success, and the public support for these strikers, that stiffens the spine of those striking or threatening to strike. It feels like a lesson being re-learned about the power in collective action.”
CNN Business
November 22, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that teachers’ unions reduced stress, while anti-union laws increase teacher stress.
We Are Teachers
November 22, 2023
US law hamstrings organising efforts because it allows employers to punish union leaders with minimal consequences and to hold mandatory meetings where workers must listen to anti-union messages, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Financial Times
November 22, 2023
Recent research from the Economic Policy Institute found rising inflation hurt public school teachers’ salaries nationwide, and districts like Portland Public Schools are struggling to keep up.
K-12 Dive
November 22, 2023
On average, teacher pay in the United States is nearly 25 percent less than what other college graduates receive, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
The Progressive
November 22, 2023
And these contracts are also a sign that employers could have been paying workers more all along, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a union-supported think tank.
“What we’ve seen until the recent period is a real imbalance of power has allowed employers to set wages at a level below what their revenue and profits could bear,” she said. “We’re seeing some reversal of that right now.”
“I think there is a momentum aspect of this,” said EPI’s Shierholz. “The success, and the public support for these strikers, that stiffens the spine of those striking or threatening to strike. It feels like a lesson being re-learned about the power in collective action.”
CNN Business
November 22, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the 7% rule would save the average Minnesota family with an infant $10,401 per year, freeing up 32,444 more Minnesotans to work to support their family, and generate $3.7 billion in new economic activity.
Minnesota Reformer
November 22, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that teachers’ unions reduced stress, while anti-union laws increase teacher stress.
We Are Teachers
November 22, 2023
It’s estimated between 27.8% and 46.5% of workers in the private sector are subject to noncompete clauses in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Spectrum News NY 1
November 22, 2023
US law hamstrings organising efforts because it allows employers to punish union leaders with minimal consequences and to hold mandatory meetings where workers must listen to anti-union messages, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Financial Times
November 22, 2023
Teachers’ pay has declined over the years compared to pay for other jobs, according to a recent report by Sylvia Allegretto, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
November 22, 2023
Cites EPI’s Company Wage Tracker.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
November 22, 2023
Quotes David Cooper [paywall].
Boston Globe
November 22, 2023
There’s much sympathy today among Americans for the issues unions have raised around corporate greed and the ever-increasing disparity between CEOs’ salaries and those of average workers; many people feel it in their own lives. CEOs earned 344 times the salary of the average workers in the United States in 2022, up from 21 times in 1965, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In These Times
November 22, 2023
Not everybody thinks the chipmakers visa is a good idea. Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at Howard University who is also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, pointed me to Bureau of Labor Statistics data that U.S. employment in manufacturing of semiconductors and electronic components had fallen 49 percent from its 2001 peak by January 2021, when Biden took office. Despite the hubbub about a manufacturing renaissance, it has risen only 5 percent since, indicating to Hira that there are plenty of Americans with industry experience available for hire.
“I think it’s a bad approach to create just another alphabet soup visa program instead of fixing the ones we have,” such as the H-1B, the L-1 and the E-2, he said. Daniel Costa, an attorney who is the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, added that the figure of 10,000 visas appeared to be plucked from the air.
New York Times
November 22, 2023
He said one study by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that in the realm of agriculture employment, employers have a roughly 1 in 100 chance of being investigated, although more than 70% of those who are investigated are found to have committed violations.
Iowa Capital Dispatch
November 22, 2023
Overall, the retail industry appears to be healthy with employment having remained steady since January though softer than last year. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said, “We have recovered more than the number of jobs that were lost in the pandemic when millions of people lost their jobs.”
Gould said one explanation for the hiring this year may be that employers, particularly in retail, are more likely to keep staff on in this tighter labor market because it has been harder to attract and retain employees.
“It’s possible that employers over the last few months and over the last year are holding on to workers because they don’t want to have that business of trying to find workers when they need them. And so it’s possible that you’re not seeing that same pickup because they’re already staffed up to some extent in some of those jobs,” she said. “… It’s too early to tell really.”
States Newsroom
November 22, 2023
When low-wage workers get sick and miss a day of work, they might have trouble covering their electricity bill. If they miss five days of work, that cuts into their food budget. And eight missed days could be the equivalent of a month’s rent.
That’s according to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute looking at access to paid sick leave among low-wage workers. The share of low-wage workers who can earn paid sick leave has doubled over the last decade, largely thanks to state- and local-level paid sick leave mandates, according to the report. These policies typically grant workers an hour of paid leave for every 30 to 40 hours worked, according to the report’s co-author Hilary Wething.
Paid sick leave mandates ensure workers “don’t have to make the impossible choice between showing up to work sick or losing pay,” Wething said.
Route Fifty
November 22, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the 7% rule would save the average Minnesota family with an infant $10,401 per year, freeing up 32,444 more Minnesotans to work to support their family, and generate $3.7 billion in new economic activity.
Minnesota Reformer
November 21, 2023