Media clips

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• The child poverty rate fell by nearly half in 2021 as enhanced child tax credit sent billions of dollars to families

  “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
• Worker Power Is Weakening, Indicators Show

  1. DOWN: Inflation-adjusted wages and salaries. Although wages are up, prices are rising faster. Between August 2021 to August 2022. While private-sector workers’ earnings rose by 4.6%, inflation shot up by 8%. In 12 of 13 sectors I studied, workers’ raises failed to keep up with price increases (the exception was mining; not even construction and leisure and hospitality kept pace with inflation). It is not plausible that worker bargaining power is causing price increases. Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, argues, “labor costs are dampening—not amplifying—price pressures.” In other words, workers’ rising wages have alleviated rather than exacerbated inflation.

  Here’s a little more context: since 1979, U.S. wages adjusted for inflation have stagnated compared to the rest of the G7 nations, as well as Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. There has also been meager improvement for American workers in other measures such as total compensation and working conditions. The increasing automation of tasks may lead to new kinds of stress and injuries, research suggests. The Economic Policy Institute has dubbed employers’ ability to intensify the working hour and day without increasing pay as “quiet fleecing.”

  4. DOWN: Wages are not keeping pace with worker productivity. Since the Economic Policy Institute published the famous alligator graph in the 1980s, with the wide jaws of productivity going up and wages going down, workers have been giving more to the economy than they have been getting. This is the “quiet fleecing” mentioned above.

  September 14, 2022
• Most U.S. workers say their pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

  Not surprisingly, surging prices have hit lower-paid workers especially hard. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 buys less today than it has at any point over the past 66 years, an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows. The current value of the minimum wage in real dollars is at its lowest level since February 1956, when the lowest U.S. wage was 75 cents — the equivalent of $7.19 in June 2022 dollars.

  CBS September 14, 2022
• Workers at Amazon, Chipotle, and Starbucks are winning union elections. But it might take years before they see a contract

  It takes unions an average of 409 days to negotiate a contract, according to a study conducted by Bloomberg Law. And just under half of newly formed unions reach a contract before the one year decertification deadline, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. PAYWALL

   
  Fortune September 14, 2022
• These states are raising their minimum wage based on today’s CPI report as inflation remains stubbornly high

  Dave Kamper, a senior state policy coordinator at the Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune that the automatic minimum wage adjustments help low-wage workers in certain states keep up with inflation. 

  “This is what indexing the minimum wage does: It means that the lowest-wage workers don’t have to wait for a legislature to get its act together and raise the minimum wage for them to keep up,” he said. “Prices are up this year, considerably higher than what we’ve been used to for a long time, and low-wage workers are going to suffer from that more than anyone else.” 

  Kamper said the other five states, and D.C., that don’t use August’s CPI report will still see an increase in minimum wage but at various times throughout the year. Also, he said, more states are likely to begin indexing their minimum wage based on inflation because wages are growing slower than prices. 

  “What we’re seeing here is that as prices go up, worker wages are falling behind,” he said. 

  Nonetheless, Kamper thinks it should be a federal policy that the federal minimum wage be tied to inflation. It allows for predictability and stability for workers, and it gives them the ability to keep up with inflation as the costs of goods soar, he said.

  “Indexing the minimum wage means the state’s minimum wage is protected from prevailing changes in the political winds,” Kamper added. 

  Fortune September 14, 2022
• Florida has a problem with minimum wage violations and it could get worse

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, Florida is one of just a handful of states nationwide that lacks a state labor department, which — prior to its abolition — had tracked workforce statistics, housed a hotline for workers to learn about their rights, and had served as a mechanism for enforcing wage and hour laws.

  88.5 WMNF September 14, 2022
• Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Ban Anti-Union “Right-to-Work” Laws

  As a press release on the bill points out, “right-to-work” laws result in 5 percent lower union rates and a decrease in overall wages for full-time workers of about $11,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  Truthout September 12, 2022
• Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Bolster Union Power

  Several studies have found that worker wages suffer in right-to-work states. A 2011 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) paper found that wages in these states were 3.1 percent lower, after controlling for outside economic factors, like higher cost of living in some states. A study from EPI five years later found that the decline in union power in the US was tied to a decrease in wages of up to 8 percent. A analysis from Rep. Sherman’s office found that in 2020, annual wages in right-to-work states were about $11,000 less on average than in states that don’t have this kind of union-weakening legislation.

  Mother Jones September 12, 2022
• Media Summon Inflation Specter to Oppose Student Debt Forgiveness

  On top of this, the central argument in Goldwien’s case and across corporate media—that debt relief will spur demand—rests on the assumption that canceling people’s debt will incentivize them to buy things for which there is not enough supply to keep prices stable. Heidi Shierholtz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, took to Twitter (5/12/22) to shut this argument down:

  The latest version of the claim “we can’t have nice things because inflation” is the idea that we can’t cancel federal student debt.… But folks, there is currently a pause on federal student loan repayments, which means that people with this debt don’t currently have debt payments. So even if somebody’s debt is entirely canceled under a new policy, their monthly costs won’t decrease relative to what they currently are. This will dramatically limit any impact on new spending and hence provide no upward inflation pressure relative to the status quo.

  FAIR September 12, 2022
• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says a return to office will solve inflation. Maybe in a different era he’d be right

  Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune back in May that a close look at GDP numbers actually shows… [PAYWALL]

  Fortune September 12, 2022