This executive order comes as noncompetes are on the rise across the country, with anywhere between 27% and 46% of all private-sector workers subject to the agreements, according to a 2019 survey by the Economic Policy Institute. Though broadly intended to discourage employees from taking trade secrets along with them when they switch jobs, noncompete clauses are increasingly worked into jobs across the economic scale.
LA Times
July 16, 2021
Black workers are especially underrepresented in industries and occupations with the fastest growth in pay. Valerie Rawlston Wilson…[Paywall]
USA Today
July 16, 2021
According to a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 31.8% of private-sector businesses that responded to EPI’s survey (a total of 634 respondents were surveyed) reported that all of their employees had to sign a non-compete agreement, regardless of their job duties or compensation. And of the respondents that had an average wage of less than $13.00, 29% of them required all their workers to enter into non-compete agreements.
Forbes
July 16, 2021
For more than three decades, our friends at the Economic Policy Institute have been waging a lonely struggle against the conventional wisdom about the causes of widening inequality. They did not have powerful allies on their side. All they had was reality.
Now, EPI’s research has been vindicated, and is increasingly accepted by mainstream economists. Wage inequality is the result of deliberate suppression of wages, which in turn is the result of a deepening power inequality.
Even better than having reality on their side, EPI economists now have a Democratic administration on their side. Several senior Biden people, including Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey on the Council of Economic Advisers, are former EPI staffers, and EPI’s insights are at last influencing national policy.
EPI pulled together all of this research in a document called “Unequal Power.”
I recently had a Zoom conversation with former EPI president Larry Mishel, the leader of this research project, along with professors Anna Stansbury of MIT and Suresh Naidu of Columbia University, to discuss the findings. You can watch the interview below:
The American Prospect
July 16, 2021
The White House estimates that noncompete agreements are used by roughly half of private-sector businesses for at least some of their employees, affecting anywhere between 36 million and 60 million workers. The numbers come from a 2019 report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which surveyed 634 employers.
KUOW
July 16, 2021
Union membership has neared all-time lows across the US, while income inequality has widened, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
A report from the organisation earlier this year found that the annual median income for a full-time worker is $3,250 less than similar work in 1979 amid declining union enrollment.
The Independent
July 16, 2021
As union membership approaches all-time lows in recorded history, income inequality is now worse than it’s been since the Great Depression, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Indeed, workers are feeling the effects — an EPI report earlier this year found that the median full time worker is making $3,250 less per year than in 1979 because of declining unionization.
Truthout
July 16, 2021
And they’re refusing to work in shit conditions. The Economic Policy Institute points out that many of the people screeching about worker shortages are restaurant owners. Lots of the businesses struggling to attract workers in Ohio and South Carolina come from the restaurant and hospitality sectors. These business owners are trying to find workers at the same wages they paid pre-pandemic.
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Workers exist for these jobs. UE reports that when Klavon’s Ice Cream, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, raised their wages to $15 an hour, they were “flooded with applicants.” As the Economic Policy Institute says, in a labor market as complex as America’s, there will always be pockets of worker shortages. But right now, “Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage… whenever anyone says, ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ‘at the wages I want to pay.’”
Scary Mommy
July 12, 2021
Over 200,000 workers will see their paychecks grow, according to an estimate by Ben Zipperer of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Of the workers who will benefit, most are women, according to Zipperer; Black and Hispanic workers will see the largest hikes.
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Workers who earn above the minimum wage will likely also benefit from hikes, according to Zipperer. They’ll feel “ripple” effects as their employers adjust pay internally, and could see their own wages increase.
Insider
July 12, 2021
As the U.S. economy (and our favorite eateries) reopen, many restaurants are facing a service worker shortage. Saying goodbye to the tipping model could be just the solution, said David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think [the pandemic] has rightly forced us into this sort of rethinking about job quality and what workers should expect. And that’s created the scenario we’re in now, where employers are struggling to fill these jobs because, generally, they’re just low-quality jobs,” he said.
Cooper added that the stressors of pandemic-era serving, including having to police mask-wearing or social distancing, as well as the risks of working an in-person job, added more to the plates of low-paid service workers.
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But if the service industry wants to recruit and retain employees, Spriggs and Cooper believe it has to re-evaluate the gratuity model that allows customers to determine the total pay of their employees.
Marketplace
July 12, 2021