“Though there were more jobs in 2022, families were certainly more squeezed by rising prices,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “And so the disappearance of this child tax credit would have hurt more.”
CNN
September 16, 2022
But the concept has drawn much criticism — for being a misnomer, for example. Or for overshadowing the “quiet firing” trend, where companies passively aggressively make their employees’ work lives unhappy, and “quiet fleecing,” which refers to workers’ pay lagging behind their increased productivity for decades.
OPB
September 16, 2022
Another factor that has contributed to many teachers leaving the field: lack of competitive pay. In August, the Economic Policy Institute released data that found teachers make about 23% less in their profession than “comparable college graduates” in other fields. This low pay, combined with teaching during a pandemic and other stressors, has caused many teachers to resign.
Teen Vogue
September 16, 2022
“Throughout 2021, strikes provided workers critical leverage to bargain over fair pay, safe working conditions, and a share of the pandemic recovery,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a blog post.
Forbes
September 16, 2022
According to numbers from the state Department of Revenue, a tiny portion of Massachusetts households — 0.6% — made incomes over $1 million in 2019. Some 90% those households were white. The Economic Policy Institute has ranked Massachusetts as the sixth worst state in the country for income inequality.
WBUR
September 16, 2022
International comparisons of inflation rates are notoriously difficult to make, and even when one manages to compare the numbers, the environments are different. For instance, when new cars became more difficult to find, Americans were harder hit because we use cars more and spend more on them than Europeans do. Looking beyond the energy and food price increases caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has a core inflation rate of 5.9 percent over the past 12 months. The rate is 5.4 percent in Canada and 5.5 percent in the United Kingdom. Across the G7 nations, the rate is 4.8 percent, and across Europe it’s 6.8 percent. “Rising inflation is a global problem,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Nation
September 16, 2022
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute details a number of positive reforms from the Biden administration, often below-the-radar, but including strong, high-profile appointments to the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court. Incidentally, these appointments reflect a serious commitment to anti-racism. Relatedly, if we consider the well-being of immigrants in an anti-racist, labor framework, the reversal of some of the most xenophobic Trump policies is also noteworthy. When it comes to the PRO Act, Biden has been vocal in his support for the omnibus labor legislation but, again, resistance from certain Democratic senators has stymied its passage in Congress.
In These Times
September 16, 2022
If there is any consolation for workers, it is that jobs remain plentiful, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“If workers were facing it [inflation] with higher unemployment … people would have fallen even further behind,” he said, adding that the impact of higher prices on Americans’ standard of living is indisputable.
“Inflation has reduced people’s purchasing power. There’s no two ways about it.”
NBC News
September 16, 2022
Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that changed. At least for workers at the bottom and in the middle, said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute.
“Instead, we’ve seen wages at the top rise, we’ve seen a declining value of the minimum wage, we’ve seen measures implemented that make it harder for workers to form a union,” Gould said.
Marketplace
September 16, 2022
According to Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrant workers who are already in our labor market would mutually benefit both our economy and the undocumented workers themselves. These workers often face horrific working conditions
Salon
September 16, 2022