Another analysis from the Economic Policy Institute argues that proposals to end Affordable Care Act tax credits will hit Black Americans especially hard. In 10 major metropolitan areas, such changes could leave over 170,000 people without insurance, drive up annual premiums by roughly $740 million, and increase preventable deaths.
NewsOne
January 5, 2026
The minimum wage is going up in 19 states this week, with workers in Hawaii now earning as much as $2 more an hour. Collectively, these pay increases will boost paychecks by a total of $5 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
Fast Company
January 5, 2026
The policy is expected to affect more than 8.3 million workers, according to a review from the lefty Economic Policy Institute.
New York Post
January 5, 2026
According to the Economic Policy Institute, allowing ACA enhanced tax subsidies to expire will increase poverty across all groups, with the effect most keenly experienced by those who’ve always had trouble accessing the medical care they need. These households are disproportionately working-class, Black, and brown — in other words, people who are already economically vulnerable.
The Motley Fool
January 5, 2026
When you consider that the typical worker’s real pay has risen only around 10% since the early 1970s, according to analyses of BLS wage data by the Hamilton Project and the Economic Policy Institute, you can see that Big Macs are now less affordable for the average worker than they used to be in the mid-20th century.
Money Digest
January 5, 2026
Other retirees take Social Security early because they feel they have no alternative. “Many people don’t have enough savings,” said Monique Morrissey, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, speaking to USA TODAY in early 2025. “And it also makes people nervous to draw down their savings, even if it’s the right thing to do.”
USA Today
January 5, 2026
Ohio’s 10 largest employers, including Walmart, Kroger and Procter & Gamble, employ nearly 250,000 people, the research firm reports. At these companies, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio averaged 324-to-1, with median worker pay at $52,996. Nationally, CEOs were paid 281 times as much as a typical worker in 2024, according to Economic Policy Institute.
Columbus Dispatch
January 5, 2026
Features interview with Adam Hersh.
TVW Washington
January 5, 2026
Con:
Ismael Cid-Martinez
Work requirements hinder Medicaid’s ability to provide health coverage and serve as a source of economic support to families in need. They effectively act as cuts to the program by making eligibility much more onerous and costly. This is true not just for those who face steep barriers to finding steady employment. It also holds for those who are already working enough to meet the requirements but find the bureaucratic process of satisfactorily documenting this to overworked state agencies too burdensome.
CQ Researcher
January 5, 2026
Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, said that priorities like dismantling DEI have “turned the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect, given the long history of racial discrimination and exploitation” in the United States.
The Washington Post
January 5, 2026