Schneider said no one has a totally satisfying answer as to why retail stores and restaurants have had such a hard time staffing up in the past six months. After all, he pointed out, many of the people who would usually fill those jobs had no safety net before the pandemic either. But a few theories add up to explain much of the problem. Long-term downward trends in immigration to the United States, and especially low immigration levels in the past two years, might have choked off an important source of low-wage workers. Increased difficulty in finding adequate and affordable child care is another reason, especially for the many families that may have relied on older relatives who have been lost to the pandemic. And some people have simply left the retail and food-service industries altogether, switching to other kinds of work. “A better way to think about the labor-shortage problem is that we have a pay-shortage problem,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, told me. Workers who take less-than-ideal jobs after mass layoffs might be more likely to stick with them instead of looking for a better role if the circumstances of many of those jobs weren’t so bad.
The Atlantic
January 21, 2022
Union membership has decreased over the past 40-plus years, and it is no coincidence that the average wage of the American worker has increased only 14% during those same 40-plus years. Read that again. It took more than 40 years for us to get a whopping 14% increase in our wages. And how much did CEO wages increase from 1978 to 2020? According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO wages increased by 1,322%. I am appalled by this, and you should be, too
Anchorage Daily News
January 21, 2022
For one, we as a society just seem content with the fact that teachers are underpaid, something that has long been reported by groups like the Economic Policy Institute. In 2020, EPI reported that educators nationally make 81 cents on the dollar, or 19 percent less, compared to other professionals with similar experience and credentials. That gap has increased significantly over the past two decades, going from 6 percent in 1996 to 19 percent in 2019.
San Diego Union Tribune
January 21, 2022
Education officials and advocates say the extreme shortages result from a long-term dearth of teachers in the U.S., driven by a weak recruiting pipeline and years of sub-par pay. The so-called teacher wage penalty, which measures the gap between teachers and similarly educated professionals, has grown since the mid-1990s, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Fortune
January 21, 2022
economist who now leads the progressive Economic Policy Institute, … The union representation rate will likely drop further as the economic (paywall).
Law360
January 21, 2022
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that studies collective bargaining, noted that the share of workers who are represented by a union fell significantly last year but merely returned to its pre-COVID level. The short-lived increase in union representation in 2019 was probably the result of the pandemic economy: Jobs in largely non-union fields like hospitality disappeared quickly, then returned last year, pulling the union membership rate down.
The Huffington Post
January 21, 2022
It’s a reality that seems disconnected from those prominent examples of union activity and from polls that show high union favorability among workers across the country. Yet, this disconnect can be explained by the country’s outdated labor laws, which also points to the need for new labor policies, says Heidi Shierholz, president of the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, who served as the Department of Labor’s chief economist under the Obama administration.
Fast Company
January 21, 2022
“If policymakers fail to act, the downward trends in unionization will likely continue and the post-pandemic economy will be marked by widespread inequality and wage stagnation for working people,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told reporters Thursday. “So the stakes are really high.”
Bloomberg Law
January 21, 2022
So despite current workers’ fierce desire for change, the ongoing pandemic’s labor shortage, and period of increased wages likely won’t bring long-lasting positive benefits, said Elise Gould, a senior economist, at the Economic Policy Institute.
Vice News
January 21, 2022
Mishel, L (2018), “Yes, Manufacturing Still Provides a Pay Advantage, But Staffing Firm Outsourcing is Eroding It”, Economic Policy Institute, Report.
VoxEU
January 21, 2022