“The key thing is productivity is actually measured by taking GDP and dividing it by hours worked. And GDP was freaking weird in the first quarter,” Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, told Fortune. “If you dig into the GDP numbers, you actually see healthy growth, but the top-line GDP numbers are negative because of a decline in inventories and an increase in imports, which has nothing to do with workers becoming less productive.”
Fortune
May 6, 2022
“One of the reasons why we continue to see persistent pay disparities both in gender and race is so much of the process and decision making about salary is hidden or secretive,” said Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
MarketWatch
May 6, 2022
“The cost of childcare has been increasing rapidly over the past several decades,” says Zane Mokhiber of the Economic Policy Institute. The bottom line, experts say, is also a big part of the problem. The non-profit Economic Policy Institute put together an interactive site, showing the average annual cost of infant care in Missouri is now more than $10,000. That’s 4% more than the average cost of housing and nearly 20% more than in-state tuition for a four-year college.
KMOV
May 6, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute, millions of workers are paid less than they’re legally owed every year. In its latest analysis, the independent, nonprofit think tank found that between 2017 and 2020, more than $3 billion in stolen wages were recovered for workers by the U.S. Department of Labor, state departments of labor and attorneys general, as well as through class and collective actions.
Fort Myers News-Press
May 6, 2022
According to a new report by Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute, over half of price inflation since March 2020 (he estimates 53.9 percent) is attributable to fatter profit margins, while labor costs account for less than 8 percent. As the chart below shows, from 1979 to 2019, profits contributed only a bit over 11 percent to price growth, and labor costs over 60 percent. Corporate power has built up over the last forty years, and the pandemic-driven demand surge has given firms even more pricing power vis-à-vis their customers. Powerful firms have also been free to pass on cost increases to their customers because they don’t face strong competition, and have been using the cover of “inflation” to add even more to their profit margins.
LA Progressive
May 6, 2022
Still, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute of educator pay statistics, nationwide teachers on average make 19.2% less annually when compared with similarly educated workers, NEA officials said.
The Chicago Tribune
May 6, 2022
The Economic Policy Institute had a very useful analysis of this data just before the pandemic. Between 1979 and 2000, there was a rough match between growth in one measure of overall inequality — the gap between wages at the 95th percentile and those of the median worker — and its estimate of the average wage premium for college-educated workers. Since 2000, however, wage inequality has continued to rise, while the college premium has barely changed:
The New York Times
May 6, 2022
That relief could extend to the nation’s tight labor market, says Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute.“There’s not just an impact on the individual, but there’s an impact economy-wide,” said costa.
Marketplace
May 6, 2022
Features interview with Josh Bivens.
Scripps National News
May 6, 2022