A study published in June by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, found, “about 1 in 7 gig workers (14 percent) earned less than the federal minimum wage on an hourly basis and more than a quarter (29 percent) earned less than the state minimum wage.”
The Register
October 12, 2022
Notably, one in seven gig workers, or people working for companies like Uber and DoorDash, are making less than the federal minimum wage, the Economic Policy Institute found earlier this year. Corporations are allowed to exploit the fact that such workers aren’t classified as employees in order to not guarantee a minimum wage or provide benefits. The fact that these jobs exist and are still staffed is evidence that Johnson’s bad faith claim that wages would rise if there were fewer wage regulations is blatantly untrue.
Truthout
October 12, 2022
Ten states apply that test to wage and hour benefits, though some only for workers in certain industries such as construction and landscaping, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
October 12, 2022
A 2018 report from the progressive nonprofit Economic Policy Institute ranked Nevada fourth in the nation for the most unequal income distribution, which increased briskly since 2007. While the nation was recovering from the Great Recession between 2009 and 2015, Nevada’s top 1 percent captured most of the income growth, snagging 81 percent from the pie, according to the report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Nevada Independent
October 11, 2022
Nguyen: So, more bad news. Our wages have generally stagnated since the 1970s. The Economic Policy Institute has found that there’s a gap between productivity and how much we’re getting paid. Productivity has risen more than three times as fast as hourly pay since the ‘70s.
And when it comes to average weekly earnings, workers in production and nonsupervisory roles earned more than $1,000 back in August of ‘72. That’s adjusted for inflation. But in August of this year, it was less than that. Those workers were earning under $940 a week.
Marketplace
October 11, 2022
The Economic Policy Institute has emerged over recent years as America’s most perceptive source of CEO pay data, and analysts from the Institute earlier this week released their latest yearly update. The headline stat from this new EPI analysis: Corporate chiefs at the 350 top American firms that trade on the stock market last year realized an average $27.8 million in compensation, an 11.1-percent increase over their previous year’s pay and a record 399 times more than the take-home of typical American workers.
Counter Punch
October 11, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute, RTW laws aim to hamstring unions’ ability to help employees bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Research shows that historically, wages for union workers average about 11% more than those of their non-union counterparts. Non-union workers in RTW states generally have fewer benefits as well.
The Tennessean
October 11, 2022
To be sure, Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, said individuals should hold off on drawing firm conclusions from one month of data.
luctuations are common in monthly reports and require several consecutive periods of a similar move before one can deduce a trend.
“It’s still hard to understand whether we’re just seeing volatility in the series because it’s a smaller sample size,” Wilson said.
CNBC
October 11, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 30 of America’s 50 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted minimum wages that are higher than the federal standard. That leaves 20 where employers are still allowed to pay their workers as little as $7.25 an hour. Five of them — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — have no minimum wage at all. Two others — Georgia and Wyoming — still have their minimum wages set at $5.15 an hour. In all seven of those states, the federal threshold of $7.25 applies.
GO Banking Rates
October 11, 2022
That’s according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Even as the country suffered through a pandemic, global supply chain disruptions and rising inflation, child poverty rates declined to the lowest on record. As the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy concluded, much of this can be attributed to last year’s expansion of the Child Tax Credit.
To be sure, some states and localities have spent relief funds in ways that do not actually improve the lives of average Americans. At least 21 states used the money to replenish unemployment insurance funding, which — as the Economic Policy Institute notes — has little impact on economic growth and effectively amounts to a tax cut for corporations. Some local governments are even using funding to build and expand jails and prisons, rather than invest in education, affordable housing, job programs or other programs that address the root causes of crime.
Finger Lakes Times
October 11, 2022