“If those are able to be enacted it’ll reinforce a shift in power towards workers, which is something they desperately need — because they’ve been on the losing end for four decades.”
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A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020—a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.
In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options.
Common Dreams August 13, 2021 -
The chief executives at major U.S. corporations received millions of dollars in bonuses or raises last year even as many companies saw slumping sales and job cuts because of the pandemic, a new analysis shows.
CEO compensation at the top 350 companies jumped nearly 19% in 2020 to an average $24.2 million, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. By comparison, pay for rank-and-file workers last year rose roughly 4%. The typical corporate leader at big companies in 2020 made $351 for every dollar earned by a typical employee, up from a ratio of 307-to-1 in 2019, according to EPI.
Economist Lawrence Mishel, who co-authored the report, said some companies touted reductions in pay for top executives to reflect the pandemic’s impact on business, but had little impact. “CEOs offering pay cuts during the pandemic yielded favorable headlines, but were symbolic at best and a head fake at worst,” he said in a statement.
CBS August 13, 2021 -
If all these workers were taken into account, July’s unemployment rate would be 8.1% instead of the reported 5.4%, according to Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC August 13, 2021 -
Still, all numbers considered, the Impact DataSource analysis shows that the benefits outweigh the costs. But there may be more to consider than just the numbers: An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think tank, found that while Amazon fulfillment centers clearly create warehouse jobs, the new employment is “likely offset by job losses in other [local] industries.”
“Amazon isn’t only hiring people who don’t have jobs,” explains Ben Zipperer, an economist at EPI who coauthored the analysis on Amazon. “It’s attracting workers from other businesses that already have jobs.”
These could be people coming from fast food or retail jobs, he says. And while these folks may be able to find higher wages at Amazon, the overall impact on employment in a local area is often minimal.
“In those places that Amazon builds fulfillment centers, you do see [that] there’s more people working in warehousing,” Zipperer says. But when it comes to the “overall impact on the local economy, we didn’t find any evidence that it [Amazon] significantly increased the number of people working.”
If Amazon doesn’t necessarily boost local employment, will it at least boost wages across Albuquerque? We won’t know until it happens, but a 2018 article from The Economist explains that in some areas, Amazon warehouse jobs seem to be linked to lower wages for similar occupations across a region. And Zipperer from EPI notes that working conditions are reportedly poor in some Amazon locations. Finally, even if Amazon doesn’t push down wages, their starting pay isn’t especially competitive compared to similar jobs.
KRQE Media August 13, 2021 -
Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider that this isn’t a “damaging” labor shortage — hiring was still up in industries like leisure and hospitality as pay went up, showing that growing wages might be the key to getting workers back.
Business Insider August 13, 2021 -
In late 2018, there were 1.5 million more available jobs than there were Americans looking for work. Right now, with 9.5 million Americans out of work, that difference is 600,000. But as Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute pointed out, if you consider people without jobs not actively looking for work, who are not counted as part of the official unemployed, the ranks of the jobless far out number open positions.
New York Times August 13, 2021 -
Parents first experience the heavy burden of tuition costs when they enroll their child in preschool. The average cost of child care, which includes early education, is more than $8,000 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute — a figure which exceeds the in-state tuition for public universities in many U.S. states.
GO Banking Rates (via Yahoo! Finance) August 13, 2021 -
A new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, authored by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra, finds that CEO compensation has grown by 1,322% between 1978 and 2020.
In contrast, the report finds that the typical worker saw their compensation grow by just 18% during that time period.
That could also be seen in the discrepancy between CEO and worker pay, which was 351-to-1 in 2020. While the authors note that the CEO to worker compensation ratio peaked in 2000 at 366-to-1, it’s still higher than any time from the 1960’s through the 1990’s.
They used a “realized” measure for compensation, which accounts for stock awards when they were vested, and stock options when they were cashed in. Under the “granted” measure, which values compensation plans based on when stock packages were granted, compensation was slightly lower.
Inequality between CEOs and everyone else even extends to the top. The report also looks at CEO compensation in comparison to the earnings of the top 0.1% of earners. The authors found that CEO compensation was 6.44 times higher than what those in the top 0.1% made in 2019, based on the most recently available tax data from the IRS.
“The CEOs are in a different stratosphere,” Mishel told Insider, adding: “It’s not just that the CEOs are so-called highly skilled or highly educated, they’ve done far better than the average earner who’s very highly skilled in the top one-thousandth, or very highly educated.”
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Mishel said that he thinks unemployment will continue to drop substantially by the end of 2022.
“I think the pressure on employers to improve wages and benefits will continue,” Mishel said. He said that Biden administration policies addressing labor standards — like raising the minimum wage and improving collective bargaining — could also contribute to a greater shift.
Business Insider August 13, 2021 -
The uptick in the quits rate is likely due “in part to increased opportunities for workers to find better job matches, potentially with higher wages or safer working conditions in the lingering pandemic,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in a tweet.
CNN Business August 13, 2021 -
CEOs at the top 350 companies in 2020 made an average $24.2 million, a 18.9% jump, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The report also found that CEO compensation has increased an astounding 1,322% since 1978. From 1978-2020, the pay for an average worker only increased 18.0%.
Complex August 13, 2021