Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, argues there isn’t a labor shortage outside of the hospitality and leisure industries. The classic sign — rising wages — is confined to that sector and, even with a boost in pay, leisure and hospitality have only risen to their pre-pandemic levels, she says. In a survey by One Fair Wage, more than half of respondents say they considered leaving their restaurant jobs due to low wages and tips.
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The Economic Policy Institute’s Shierholz says there won’t be any real realignment of the economy without massive policy changes, including raising the minimum wage and rate of unionization.
“There’s a ton of evidence that employers of low- and middle-wage workers have had the power to suppress workers’ wages, and that dynamic has been growing for decades,” she says. “We can pay our lowest paid workers more. Instead, the minimum wage is 30 percent less than it was in 1968.”
Rhode Island Monthly
August 27, 2021
USTR works closely with the Labor Department, which in turn is in close contact with American and Mexican unions to identify abuses. The Labor Department’s top liaison with USTR is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs, Thea Lee.
Prospect readers may recognize the name. Thea Lee was president of the Economic Policy Institute, and for 20 years before that was a senior staffer at the AFL-CIO.
American Prospect
August 20, 2021
The declining bargaining power of unions contributes to the crisis of extreme income inequality in the United States. “The erosion of collective bargaining is the second largest factor that suppressed wage growth and fueled wage inequality over the last four decades,” finds the Economic Policy Institute. Belonging to a union significantly boosts wages: Unionized workers earn, on average, over 11% more than their nonunionized counterparts and are more likely to have health benefits from their employer. Unionized workers also are less likely to get laid off than their nonunion workers.
Capital and Main
August 20, 2021
CEOs at the largest publicly traded companies earned, on average, 351 times as much as the typical worker in their industry, according to a new analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s the largest gap since the stock market bubble peaked in 2000.
Those executives also got a handsome pay raise: 18.9% on average. Meanwhile, the typical worker (who didn’t get laid off) saw only a 3.9% increase in wages.
The pay gap between top executives and their employees has been widening since the 1980s, when CEOs made about 45 times as much as the median worker.
“The escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes, generating widespread inequality,” wrote economists Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra, who authored the study.
Center for Public Integrity
August 20, 2021
There are an estimated 9.5 million Americans who are unemployed, but the Economic Policy Institute determined that there are another 10.4 million workers who continue to be financially hurt by the unemployment downturn as of June.
The Sun
August 20, 2021
In 2020, COVID-19 put a huge dent in household incomes, with millions of people losing their jobs. Unemployment hit low-wage workers the hardest, with 80% of job losses in 2020 coming from workers in the bottom 25% of wage distribution, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Low-wage workers who had a lower tax liability before the pandemic hit may have seen their federal income tax bill completely wiped out when their income dropped.
Money
August 20, 2021
That’s been an ongoing issue with minimal resolution in sight, said Ron Hira, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute. He said while the report is “vital and consistent” with his longtime research, it just scratches the surface of the issues involving temporary and contracted workers in tech.
“This report is important because it sheds light on the actual employment situation for most technology workers, which is much worse than what most people, including reporters and policymakers, believe to be the case,” Hira said. “There’s a large gap between what people’s impression of the technology labor market versus its true state.”
Hira also disputed the misperception that there’s a shortage of technology workers, and as a result, those workers have their pick of jobs, can demand high wages and luxurious working conditions.
“The (tech) companies themselves have played an aggressive role in creating the false version of the technology labor market,” Hira said. “It is so difficult to break through with the truth because the misperception of widespread labor shortages has become a truism for most people.”
USA Today
August 20, 2021
Last year, while the US was in a pandemic recession and millions of people were out of work, CEOs of the country’s biggest public companies saw their compensation increase $24 million on average. How did that happen? It’s all about the stock market. That’s Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow and former president of the Economic Policy Institute.
BYU Radio
August 20, 2021
Un análisis del Economic Policy Institute (Instituto de Política Económica) ratifica la tesis de Xiuhtecutli al destacar que los trabajadores agrícolas, considerados “esenciales” en medio de la pandemia para sostener las cadenas de suministro de alimentos, “no han sido recompensados adecuadamente” pues ganaban 14,62 dólares por hora en promedio en 2020, mucho menos que algunos de los “peor pagados” del país.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
August 20, 2021
Harris spent years at the Labor Department before rising to deputy labor secretary in 2009. His work carrying out the Obama administration’s policies on workplace safety, wage theft and other labor issues drew plenty of praise from the left. The Economic Policy Institute wrote regarding Harris’s breadth of experience that it was “unlikely that anyone so knowledgeable will ever serve” at the agency again.
Huffpost
August 20, 2021