By January 1, hourly minimum wages in 23 states will rise as part of previously scheduled efforts to reach $15 an hour or to account for cost-of-living changes. The increases account for more than $5 billion in pay boosts for an estimated 8.4 million workers, the Economic Policy Institute estimates.
Additionally, nearly 30 cities and counties across the US will increase their minimum wage, according to the EPI, a left-leaning think tank.
“The fact that there’s high inflation really just underscores how necessary these minimum wage increases are for workers,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, a research assistant at the EPI. “Even before the pandemic, there was no county in the United States where you could affordably live as a single adult at $15 an hour.”
CNN Business
January 6, 2023
The pay increases affect about 8.4 million workers, who will gain a combined $5 billion over the course of 2023, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found.
After the wave of wage hikes, Washington became the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $15.74 per hour. Meanwhile, workers in Massachusetts and the New York City area saw their minimum base pay rise to $15 per hour.
ABC News
January 6, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2018 that more than 9 million workers who are statutorily excluded from overtime protections, such as teachers and registered nurses, are excluded from the pumping protections.
Bloomberg Law
January 6, 2023
Education has long been considered a calling, but that doesn’t mean teachers and staff won’t leave if they are substantially underpaid. An analysis this month from the Economic Policy Institute spells out how teachers in the early 1990s were, on average, paid about 5 percent less than college graduates in other professions. Today, they are paid close to 25 percent less. There is no shortage of people who want to work in education, the report concludes, but there’s a scarcity of qualified teachers who are “willing to work at current wages and under current working conditions.”
The Washington Post
January 6, 2023
An estimated 3.2 million Californians — 18.9% of the workforce — are getting raises, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
LA Times
January 6, 2023
“The big ugly fact out there is that since modern recorded history, only about half of workers have ever had a retirement plan,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, referring to savings vehicles like 401(k)s. “More than half of workers either have little or nothing.”
NPR
January 6, 2023
Not only do right-to-work laws undermine unions, they also hurt workers’ wages. The Economic Policy Institute found that workers in right-to-work states earn 3.1 percent less than comparable workers in states without such laws, after adjusting for differences in the cost of living. That means a worker’s pay is on average around $1,600 less per year.
The New Republic
January 6, 2023
In 2021, housekeepers made an average hourly wage of $14.22 per hour, while home health aides made $14.07 per hour, according to the Department of Labor. Childcare workers made an average of $13.31 per hour. Domestic workers are three times as likely to be living in poverty as other workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Fast Company
January 6, 2023
In 2017, the FBI reported the cost of street crime at about $13.8 billion, the same year that the Economic Policy Institute released a study saying that just one form of wage theft — minimum wage violations — costs U.S. workers even more: an estimated $15 billion annually, impacting an estimated 17% of low-wage workers.
The American Prospect
January 6, 2023
Margaret Poydock, a policy analyst with the Economic Policy Institute who studies the labor movement, said the increased interest in workers’ rights from Gen Z workers stems in part from the time they’ve grown up. The pandemic, for example, put added stress on so-called “essential workers” or frontline workers in the retail industry at grocery stores, restaurants and shops.
Modern Retail
January 6, 2023