And because that number has stayed stuck while prices keep rising, the Economic Policy Institute warned that the federal minimum wage now has less actual spending power than at any point in the last 66 years.
Business Insider
August 4, 2022
The federal minimum wage has not changed since 2009, and the Economic Policy Institute reported that the value of the minimum wage is worth 27 percent less than it was worth 13 years ago.
“A national $15 minimum wage would raise the incomes of tens of millions of workers, including servers in restaurants, grocery store employees and essential health care workers—as many as 2 million direct care workers who provide long-term services and supports would benefit from a $15 minimum wage in 2025,” a piece published by the Economic Policy Institute stated.
Newsweek
August 4, 2022
The median wage for child-care workers in 2021 was $13.22 an hour, or about $27,500 a year. Almost all are hourly workers, and the benefits are limited—according to an analysis by researchers at the the Economic Policy Institute, only one in five has access to employer-sponsored health insurance, and only one in 10 has a retirement plan. With high turnover and lean staff, administrators have been forced to ask educators to work extra hours.
The Atlantic
August 4, 2022
Most large corporations want access to politicians, so they spread their contributions across political parties and people with “very different” ideological approaches, according to John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“They’re not using their time sitting with legislators to change their minds about abortion,” Schmitt told me. “They’re using the time to change the regulatory structure that affects their industries or to influence where federal, state [or] local funds go.”
Los Angeles Times
August 4, 2022
“The brief love affair with essential employees saw its greatest flourishing in April and May of 2020,” said Dave Kamper, senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Policy Institute. “Unemployment numbers had hit a staggering high, and the whole country was on the same page about the risks of Covid and the importance of compensating workers who had no choice but face exposure.”
Bloomberg Law
August 4, 2022
According the Economic Policy Institute, Black children are more than twice as likely as white children to attend high-poverty schools, and underperform on math and reading assessments.
Charlotte Observer
August 4, 2022
“We don’t seem to have a demand-generation problem today. People (including businesses and governments) are spending robustly, so, we don’t need to pump up aggregate demand,” says Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute.
Forbes
August 4, 2022
Based on the chart, $7.25 in July 2009 the month of the last time the minimum wage was increased would be about $9.97 in June 2022 dollars using seasonally adjusted CPI. So,the $7.25 minimum wage is worth about 27% below its purchasing power in July 2009, as seen in our calculation and an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.
Zipperer said that the minimum wage has fallen by about 40% since the 1960s, “even though we’re a much richer country than we were over 50 years ago, and workers are more than twice as productive as they were 50 years ago.”
Business Insider
August 4, 2022
The federal minimum wage is now at its lowest value since 1956, when the minimum wage was 75 cents found
new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute.
A worker making the minimum wage today is taking home 27.4% less than they did in July of 2009, and 40.2% less than in February 1968 when adjusted for inflation, EPI found.
CNN Business
August 4, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute, minimum wage is indexed in 18 states and in Washington, D.C., meaning it is “automatically adjusted each year for increases in prices.” Economic analyst David Cooper says that by indexing minimum wage, the hourly salary never loses its value — and it’s written into law that the wage will rise by a certain amount depending on a specific formula, so politicians are not deciding the number.
Click on Detroit
August 4, 2022