Media clips
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Elise Gould: You think about two different students in the economy, one who has to work a job maybe 30, 40 hours a week. They need that money. Compare that with somebody who can devote their entire being to being a full time student.
Laine Perfas: That’s Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, also in D.C.
Gould: Those sacrifices have a cost on their ability to focus, their ability to be fully present in – in all of their activities.
Christian Science Monitor July 23, 2021 -
In June, leisure and hospitality wages surged even higher, a 7.1% increase from the year prior. But even those wages are not much higher than pre-pandemic levels, tweeted Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama administration economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. Those wages still remain lower than in other industries.
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Shierholz previously told Insider that one solution for addressing the labor shortage could be simply raising the minimum wage, a policy proposal that the president backs, but that some Democrats have shot down.
Business Insider July 23, 2021 -
A new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found the $7.25 minimum wage has lost roughly one-fifth of its value since July 2009, after adjusting for inflation.
The value of minimum wage in 2009 would be equivalent to $9.17 per hour today. Minimum wage hit its peak in 1986, according to EPI, as it would be worth $11.12 in today’s dollars.
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“That’s a really remarkable finding, that more than 50 years ago we paid the lowest wage workers in this economy substantially more than what we pay them today,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at EPI, told Newsweek.
“Maybe the minimum wage hasn’t changed, but the cost of living has increased over that period,” Zipperer added. “It’s more expensive to pay rent, it’s more expensive to buy food and it’s more expensive to pay for healthcare.”
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Zipperer noted the United States has the economic capacity to pay employees higher wages but has primarily only done so for those who are already at the top of the wage distribution.
“But for a low-wage worker that essentially means that you can’t afford a decent standard of living,” he said.
He added, “A single adult with no kids is going to need at least a $15 an hour job today in order to afford basic necessities like rent, food, transportation expenses and taxes.”Newsweek July 23, 2021 -
Employment benefits have given workers a little more time and higher expectations to find better jobs. “Workers have seen during the pandemic that when lawmakers choose to step in and act and protect people [via stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, healthcare], work doesn’t have to suck as much. When workers are asked to do tough jobs, they want to be paid more,” David Cooper, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute said. “For the first time since the late 1990s, low wages workers have the leverage to demand higher pay. The workers who walk out of Burger King are using this to their advantage.”
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While some professionals are quitting because of burnout or existential crises, according to a New York Times article about the phenomenon from April, low wage workers don’t have the savings or other financial cushion to leave the job market for extended periods of time to explore passion projects and travel, Cooper says.
But people are finding better jobs in the same industries, or entirely new ones. Cooper says the expanded social safety net has left workers wanting and expecting more, and has allowed them to spend a little more time out of the workforce looking for the right job. “In general, unemployment benefits give workers the ability to wait for better jobs and better working conditions,” said Cooper. “They’re taking time to pick the right jobs. Those jobs might be closer to their interests, closer to what they studied, jobs that are a career rather than a means to pay the bills.”
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“Flexibility to look for better jobs has been eroded intentionally through policy choices and campaigns to undermine workers’ leverage and ability to expect more from employers,” said Cooper.
VICE July 23, 2021 -
In the wake of the mass unemployment caused by the pandemic, several organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute and National Employment Law Project, created a report with unemployed workers outlining reforms needed to fix the widespread issues to unemployment insurance that were exposed by Covid-19.
The Guardian July 23, 2021 -
From 1979 to 2019, wages for the lowest-paid decile of workers rose 3.3% when adjusted for inflation, while wages for the top 5% of workers rose 63.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Over that time, as middle-class jobs were automated or sent overseas, and as more people vied for what was left in the wake of the 2001 and 2007–2009 recessions, employers had the upper hand. By one estimate, 53 million people—around 44% of U.S. workers— were low-wage before the pandemic, making an average of $10.22 an hour.
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That’s the result of four decades of declining union power and a stagnant minimum wage. “The idea that any short-run shortages that do exist would undo 40 years of employers’ ability to suppress wages—it just does not ring true whatsoever,” says Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama Administration economist who works at the Economic Policy Institute.
Time July 23, 2021 -
Meanwhile, bosses of other companies will use Dimon’s riches to argue that the market price for their own talent has just gone up. Chief executive pay already grew 16% in 2020, the Economic Policy Institute found in May. America’s corporate elite continues to pull itself up by the bootstraps.
Reuters July 23, 2021 -
Meanwhile, 2019 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank created to address the needs of low- and middle-income workers, recognized some economic benefits of Airbnbs but concluded that those benefits do not outweigh the costs to local jurisdictions in the form of tax revenue and potentially higher housing costs for local residents if enough properties for long-term housing were converted to short-term accommodations. The analysis also concluded that those benefiting from short-term rentals were disproportionately white and high-wealth households.
Albany Times Union July 23, 2021 -
By the way: Farmworkers continued to make less in 2020 than workers with even minimal education, the Economic Policy Institute says in an analysis of wage data. Ag workers made $14.62 per hour on average, and H-2A workers made less — $13.68 per hour, writes EPI’s director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, Daniel Costa.
Agri-Pulse July 23, 2021 -
Might this be just a flash in the pan? Heidi Shierholz, who was also a chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration and is now director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is skeptical that the job market is breaking with its decades-long trend of wage stagnation at the bottom and lavish rewards at the top.
“How much of what this captures is just a trampoline effect?” she wondered. “The jobs that come back tend to look like the jobs that were lost.” After the dust settles and the employment holes created by the pandemic in several industries fill up, the deal offered to workers might look much like it did before the pandemic.
Ultimately, “we are stuck in a world where labor is very cheap and we don’t expect much from it,” Ms. Stevenson said. “I don’t see this pandemic fundamentally reshaping that.” Ms. Shierholz put it this way: “There has not been any fundamental restructuring of power in the economy.”
New York Times July 23, 2021