Despite these constraints, Trumka continued Sweeney’s commitment to working closely with other progressive movements, to pushing the policy envelope leftwards (Trumka chaired the board of the Economic Policy Institute), to promoting a vision of the common good that was sometimes broader than that of some of his union brothers and sisters.
American Prospect
August 6, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute reports that even Black women who are essential workers face a pay gap of about 11-27% less than white men. Black female nurses, for instance, earn about $28.47/hour while non-Hispanic white men earn $34.87 for the same job.
The study adds that occupational segregation often limits the access Black women have to higher-paying jobs, and that the pandemic saw a disproportionate share of women, especially Black women, become unemployed. 18.3% of Black female workers lost their jobs compared to 13.2% of white men.
Next City
August 6, 2021
[paywall]…more than the 4.9 percent for white employees, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Houston Chronicle
August 6, 2021
Includes quote from Celine McNicholas…[paywall]
Law360
August 2, 2021
Virtually every Econ 101 class teaches the trickle-down myth that workers are paid what they are worth, and locking the minimum wage into national productivity numbers would be a way to finally ensure that claim is true.
This is the figure that would do the most for American workers. As a recent Economic Policy Institute paper found, productivity has increased by over 72% from 1979 to 2019, while worker pay has only increased by 17%.
Business Insider
August 2, 2021
President Joe Biden and most Democrats have been calling for a drastic increase in the federal minimum wage, to $15 from $7.25. While a handful of states and many prominent companies have taken matters into their own hands, raising their minimum wages well into the double digits, other states are tied to the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t changed since 2009. Where does your state fit in, and are there any changes on the horizon? We examined data from the Economic Policy Institute to find out.
MSN
August 2, 2021
The closures mark a new, unfortunate, phase in the slow reopening of society. But the reality is that for many people, particularly people of color, working remotely has never been an option. In June, the progressive Economic Policy Institute found that only one in six Latinx workers and one in five Black workers have been able to telework during the pandemic, compared to one in four white workers.
The disparities are even more severe along educational lines. In April, a third of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher were teleworking. Only one in twenty workers with a high school degree or less were able to do the same.
Mother Jones
August 2, 2021
Costs in Virginia were already high before the pandemic. In 2019, the Economic Policy Institute said that Virginia ranked No. 10 on the list of states with the most expensive child care. That year the average annual cost of infant care in Virginia was more than $14,000. For a 4-year-old, the annual cost was nearly $11,000.
The Virginian-Pilot
August 2, 2021
Within the American economy, hourly compensation and the productivity of workers have grown disproportionately. Between 1979-2019, the Economic Policy Institute found, employees have increased productivity by 72%, but their wages have only increased 17% in the last forty years.
Fast Company
August 2, 2021
In 2020, the data shows, the average C.E.O. of an S. & P. 500 company made $15.5 million—two hundred and ninety-nine times as much as the median-paid employee. Although we do not have directly comparable numbers going back in time, a forthcoming study by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute tracks the average C.E.O.’s pay and the average worker’s pay (and the ratio of one to the other) for the three hundred and fifty largest public companies in the United States. They estimate that, in 1978, the average C.E.O. made $1.7 million, adjusted for inflation, which was 31.4 times the average worker’s pay. Since that time, the share of all wages and salaries collected by the highest-earning one per cent of Americans has almost doubled, reaching its current level of about thirteen per cent. Roughly forty per cent of the people who make up that one per cent are executives, and their escalating compensation, Mishel and Kandra argue, has spilled over to other top managers in for-profit firms and large nonprofits alike. The power of example aside, today’s corporate executives frequently derive financial benefit from actions (outsourcing, downsizing, merging, defeating union drives) that directly or indirectly reduce pay and opportunity further down the line. In this way, too, executive pay has arguably been a significant driver, and not just a symptom, of rising inequality. That insight has led a growing number of local, state, and federal lawmakers to develop policy proposals that would reward or penalize companies based on their pay ratios.
The New Yorker
July 30, 2021