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Since 1938, the minimum wage has been raised more than twenty times, in administrations of both parties. But its purchasing power has meant different things depending on the year. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage hit its peak in 1968 at $12.30 an hour in today’s dollars.
“Obviously, since that time, increases in the federal minimum wage have been either less frequent or just smaller, just inadequate to keep up with the rise in prices,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute told Spectrum News.
That’s led to calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, dubbed the “Fight for $15.” It has unleashed strikes and drawn the support of President Biden.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 15, 2021 -
Both sides turn to the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 to bolster their cases. Proponents say about a fifth of the workforce would get a raise, which would boost their annual pay, on average, more than $3,300.
That hike would particularly benefit Black and Latino workers, who make disproportionately less than others. In all, the legislation would lift 900,000 people out of poverty, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“I take that as a pretty positive outcome – if you’re going to be lifting nearly a million people out of poverty and raising pay for twenty seven million, even if there is some negative impact on jobs in some places,” David Cooper, a senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview with Spectrum News.
Spectrum News NY 1 April 15, 2021 -
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
VOX April 15, 2021 -
Declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to an estimate by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel, said that tying federal contract dollars to union jobs wouldn’t be sufficient for creating a workforce with strong union density.
“It will make a difference, but you absolutely need meaningful labor-law reform, not nibbling around the edges and offering piecemeal” measures, she said. “The system is fundamentally broken and requires fundamental reform.”
Bloomberg April 15, 2021 -
The depth and speed of the current economic downturn was unprecedented, but the longstanding gaps in wealth and wages indicate that Black and brown households will take longer to bounce back, according to Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race and ethnicity.
“In periods of general economic growth, racial disparities in a wide range of poverty indicators have remained constant, suggesting a lack of political will over decades to tackle the root causes. Black and brown households have been hardest hit in every economic crisis, and taken the longest to recover,” said Moore.
The Guardian April 15, 2021 -
A September 2020 study by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found that Southern states are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption to stop local governments from implementing worker protections such as raising the minimum wage or guaranteeing paid sick leave.
That stance, the institute wrote, is rooted “in a long history of events and actions that have sought to promote the interests of historically privileged property owners and perpetuate the South’s racist past.”
Julia Wolfe, one of the study’s authors and a state economic analyst at the institute, said these preemption laws seem to be “targeted at preventing action in more progressive cities.”
Stateline April 15, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.
“That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”
But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.
The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.
Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.
McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.
“If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.
90.5 WESA April 15, 2021 -
Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.
“Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”
The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.
Denver Post April 15, 2021 -
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.
Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 15, 2021 -
It’s an issue that’s been ongoing since the start of the pandemic. Last April, the Economic Policy Institute reported that for every 10 people who successfully filed a claim, an additional two people didn’t try because it was too difficult. In all, the report suggested, millions more people would have filed for benefits if the process were easier.
…
Other potential claimants may be misclassified. There are many people who are classified as employed, but absent from work due to pandemic-related business closures, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Some workers who should be classified as ‘unemployed’ are mistakenly classified as ‘employed, but not at work’.
Worker misclassification contributed to approximately 636,000 missing workers who could have filed for unemployment benefits in March 2021, according to the EPI. “People were thinking they would get called back to work, but they’re actually unemployed,” says Gould.
TIME/Next Advisor April 15, 2021 -
“The way a recession can really hurt people just starting out can have lasting effects,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider. “There’s a lot of evidence that the first postgrad job you get sets the stage in some important way for later.”
Business Insider April 15, 2021 -
If you wanted to find an original text for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, it would be an 83-page report by a Washington think tank released in the thick of the 2020 presidential race. In 2018, midway through Trump’s term, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set out to reimagine U.S. foreign policy. The institution assembled about a dozen specialists in economics and international affairs who’d worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. Among them was Sullivan, a senior fellow. He made a point to talk with labor leaders. “The fact that he was reaching out to me when I was at AFL-CIO was a sign that he was trying to expand his horizons,” Thea Lee, who was then deputy chief of staff at the labor federation and is now president of the Economic Policy Institute, told me.
The Atlantic April 15, 2021 -
Before COVID-19, the gap between the bottom and top rungs of the economic ladder grew over many years. Between 1979 and 2015, the top 1% saw its income grow 229% in the U.S., according to the Economic Policy Institute. Income for the bottom 90% increased 46%. Federal tax cuts in 2017 disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
…
Those people are in trouble if benefits end before they have work, and not even a robust rebound will immediately provide all the jobs needed, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Once evictions are allowed again, a lot of people who couldn’t pay the rent are in trouble,” she said. “Recovery is not going to happen in one fell swoop. I can’t imagine that inequality won’t be higher.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution April 15, 2021 -
For example, investments in the power grid are “needed to protect from catastrophic weather events, but also to allow us to move to renewable sources,” says Robert E. Scott, a senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Or better broadband internet access could make less commuting (and less carbon emissions) possible, he says.
…
And that tracks for green jobs, too. Manufacturing jobs, including those in clean energy, will “generate large numbers of excellent jobs for non-college-educated workers,” says Scott. “Those are the people who’ve been left behind for the last 20 years.”
CNBC April 15, 2021 -
Conversely, the decline of unions has played a big role in rising inequality and wage stagnation. And workers have lost bargaining power as weak antitrust policies have allowed corporations to gain ever more market power.
New York Times April 15, 2021 -
The Economic Policy Institute noted the key role that Amazon workers played in the pandemic, said they deserved “a fair election,” and called for the PRO Act to become law.
Reuters April 15, 2021 -
The Bessemer results “reveal a broken union election system,” Celine McNicholas, labor counsel at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement. “It is clear that if policymakers do not reform our nation’s labor law system, then they are effectively denying workers a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining.’’
AP News April 15, 2021 -
Under the Trump administration, the NLRB “systematically rolled back workers’ rights,” according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. President Joe Biden has already signaled he intends to be much more pro-worker than his predecessor, releasing a video in support of unionization efforts and against corporate “anti-union propaganda” – as Amazon employees were voting.
Markets Insider April 15, 2021 -
The decline in collective bargaining has translated to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked for the median worker, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to he Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It has also contributed to the widening wage inequality gap, as unions disproportionately benefit low-wage earners,” EPI said.
Market Watch April 15, 2021 -
At this distance, Goleman’s denunciation of irrational and “mean-spirited impulses” looks like a refusal to acknowledge concrete societal factors that were right before his eyes. “All pain, no gain for most workers,” authors at the Economic Policy Institute announced in a 1996 report, concluding, in language that was unusually agitated for Washington economists, that, since the seventies, an erosion of wages, a loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs, and greater job insecurity had had a catastrophic effect on the middle class. The pain had intensified with the winnowing away of social services, and even progressive politicians were more concerned with demonstrating their bona fides as business-friendly than with affirming their concern for the working class, Blacks, immigrants, or women. “Mean-spirited” seems too gentle a word for the era’s distinctive retreat from progressive struggles. Who could forget Rodney King’s beating at the hands of police, the disbelief of the politicians who interrogated Anita Hill, or the empty chairs of the women whom Congress had refused to call as witnesses in support of her testimony?
The New Yorker April 15, 2021 -
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
VOX April 15, 2021 -
Declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to an estimate by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel, said that tying federal contract dollars to union jobs wouldn’t be sufficient for creating a workforce with strong union density.
“It will make a difference, but you absolutely need meaningful labor-law reform, not nibbling around the edges and offering piecemeal” measures, she said. “The system is fundamentally broken and requires fundamental reform.”
Bloomberg April 15, 2021 -
The depth and speed of the current economic downturn was unprecedented, but the longstanding gaps in wealth and wages indicate that Black and brown households will take longer to bounce back, according to Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race and ethnicity.
“In periods of general economic growth, racial disparities in a wide range of poverty indicators have remained constant, suggesting a lack of political will over decades to tackle the root causes. Black and brown households have been hardest hit in every economic crisis, and taken the longest to recover,” said Moore.
The Guardian April 15, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.
“That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”
But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.
The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.
Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.
McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.
“If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.
90.5 WESA April 14, 2021 -
Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.
“Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”
The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.
Denver Post April 14, 2021 -
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.
Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 13, 2021 -
It’s an issue that’s been ongoing since the start of the pandemic. Last April, the Economic Policy Institute reported that for every 10 people who successfully filed a claim, an additional two people didn’t try because it was too difficult. In all, the report suggested, millions more people would have filed for benefits if the process were easier.
…
Other potential claimants may be misclassified. There are many people who are classified as employed, but absent from work due to pandemic-related business closures, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Some workers who should be classified as ‘unemployed’ are mistakenly classified as ‘employed, but not at work’.
Worker misclassification contributed to approximately 636,000 missing workers who could have filed for unemployment benefits in March 2021, according to the EPI. “People were thinking they would get called back to work, but they’re actually unemployed,” says Gould.
TIME/Next Advisor April 13, 2021 -
“The way a recession can really hurt people just starting out can have lasting effects,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider. “There’s a lot of evidence that the first postgrad job you get sets the stage in some important way for later.”
Business Insider April 13, 2021 -
If you wanted to find an original text for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, it would be an 83-page report by a Washington think tank released in the thick of the 2020 presidential race. In 2018, midway through Trump’s term, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set out to reimagine U.S. foreign policy. The institution assembled about a dozen specialists in economics and international affairs who’d worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. Among them was Sullivan, a senior fellow. He made a point to talk with labor leaders. “The fact that he was reaching out to me when I was at AFL-CIO was a sign that he was trying to expand his horizons,” Thea Lee, who was then deputy chief of staff at the labor federation and is now president of the Economic Policy Institute, told me.
The Atlantic April 13, 2021 -
Before COVID-19, the gap between the bottom and top rungs of the economic ladder grew over many years. Between 1979 and 2015, the top 1% saw its income grow 229% in the U.S., according to the Economic Policy Institute. Income for the bottom 90% increased 46%. Federal tax cuts in 2017 disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
…
Those people are in trouble if benefits end before they have work, and not even a robust rebound will immediately provide all the jobs needed, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Once evictions are allowed again, a lot of people who couldn’t pay the rent are in trouble,” she said. “Recovery is not going to happen in one fell swoop. I can’t imagine that inequality won’t be higher.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution April 13, 2021