The strike began on Wednesday, and workers will be out picketing until February 2. It’s the latest group of workers to take to the picket line as thousands across the country fight for better conditions — a moment that the labor movement is hoping to build upon. Despite union approval ratings being at their highest since 1965, union membership has been declining for decades, which the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute attributes to increasingly weakened labor laws that allow employers to host mandatory anti-union meetings and replace striking workers.
Business Insider
January 14, 2022
Long-distance truck drivers are largely paid by the mile, not the hour, “and they end up working a really tremendous amount of uncompensated hours during the time that they’re in detention,” said Terri Gerstein, director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. These new studies could help to create a record to start addressing the problem, she said.
Bloomberg Government
January 14, 2022
And even with an elevated 10.6 million job openings, questions remain about how labor market disparities particularly disadvantage Black women. The Economic Policy Institute has noted that the demographic is disproportionately represented in lower-wage, higher-contact industries like leisure and hospitality that tend to be more sensitive to waves of the virus.
Yahoo Finance
January 14, 2022
“Many people put too much weight on the drop in November,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Quartz
January 14, 2022
Though the quit rate is high, workers are not necessarily getting out of the job market. “People who quit are taking other jobs, not leaving the workforce,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, tweeted in response to the report.
Supply Chain Dive
January 14, 2022
Of the 13 Southern states, only Florida and Virginia are among the over 80 jurisdictions that will raise their wages this year. Both states are among the 11 that passed legislation in recent years to gradually raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. At the start of the year, Virginia raised its minimum wage from $9.50 to $11 an hour. For a full-time, full-year minimum wage worker, this results in an annual wage increase of $3,120, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). In September, Florida’s minimum wage will also increase to $11 an hour.
Facing South
January 14, 2022
RentCafe says it used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Policy Institute, BLS, and Zillow to calculate how long it would take two-person families to save for a starter home down payment.
News12 Bronx
January 14, 2022
In a recent analysis of BLS data, Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould wrote, “The media has focused on the high quits rate, but what’s often missing from that coverage is that workers who are quitting their jobs aren’t dropping out of the labor force, they are quitting to take other jobs.” Indeed, given that hires exceed quits in every sector, it is likely that many workers are switching to better paying jobs within the same sector. Gould also noted that “the labor force fell by nearly 8 million workers in March and April 2020 and has regained about 70% of those losses since then.”
Brookings Institution
January 14, 2022
While farm wages have gradually risen over the past 30 years, farmworkers earned an average wage in 2020 of just $14.62 per hour—a rate roughly 60% that of the average wage earned by comparable workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The American Prospect
January 14, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute, phasing in a federal $15 minimum wage by 2025 would raise the earnings of 32 million workers—that is, more than 20% of the national workforce. In fact, not only would it help minimum wage workers, but those just above that wage level would benefit from adjusted pay scales.
dogwood
January 14, 2022