For years, wages stagnated, and the federal government did little in response. The last time Congress raised the federal minimum wage was more than 13 years ago. The Economic Policy Institute in a recent analysis found that, “(a)ccounting for price increases in June, the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is now worth less than at any point since February 1956.”
MinnPost
August 12, 2022
“One major source of worker power is the implicit threat that you’ll quit your job and take another,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “When there’s a huge number of job openings at one time, that implicit threat is real.”
Associated Press
August 12, 2022
“There has been a long-trending erosion of teacher wages and compensation relative to other college graduates,” found a 2020 report by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. The report pointed out that public school teachers earn 19 percent less in weekly wages than nonteacher college graduates.
The Washington Post
August 12, 2022
In 2019, the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, estimated that by 2024, the U.S. would need more than 300,000 teachers to fill the demand for educators nationwide.
ABC 13 News
August 12, 2022
These trends are occurring as inequality also continues to grow. The top one percent of families earn 21 percent of the income in the U.S., according to the Economic Policy Institute. Ultra-wealthy Teton County, Wyo., is the most unequal county in the country.
Wyoming Public Radio
August 12, 2022
Labor has far less bargaining power today than in the stagflationary 1970s. As my colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute observe, anytime wages lag far behind inflation, they can’t be driving it.
American Prospect
August 12, 2022
A recent Economic Policy Institute (EPI) analysis found that after adjusting for inflation, the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is now worth less than at any point since 1956. The purchasing power for workers making the federal minimum wage diminished by 27.4% since 2009, when the starting wage was last increased.
Yahoo Finance
August 12, 2022
Features Heidi discussing inflation and the jobs report.
CNN
August 12, 2022
Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz joins Yahoo Finance Live to explain the differences in the July jobs report headline numbers and the household survey and what that means for the labor market.
Yahoo Finance
August 12, 2022
Only 16.2% of Latino workers and 19.7% of black workers were able to work from home in 2020, compared to 37% of Asian workers and 29.9% of non-Hispanic white workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
August 12, 2022