Heidi Shierholz, President of the Economic Policy Institute and former Chief Economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, warns of a slowing US economy, with tariffs hiking prices, tax cuts inflating deficits, wage boosts via minimum hikes and unions, unrigged labor data despite BLS firing, and mass deportations costing 6M jobs including for Americans.
David Lin Report (YouTube)
August 25, 2025
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an expert in wage dynamics, told Newsweek that areas such as leisure and hospitality “experienced much faster wage growth coming out of the pandemic because of the sheer numbers of jobs lost and the need for employers to scramble to attract and retain workers.”
These effects, she said, were more pronounced for those at the lower end of wage distribution, who required more “enticement” from employers to return to less-compensated, face-to-face roles—bargaining power that was reinforced by the financial supports put in place by policymakers during the pandemic.
Newsweek
August 25, 2025
But some professions are falling further behind than others, with educators seeing the biggest gap between income growth and inflation during the past four years, the study found. Teachers have long struggled with a “wage gap,” meaning that they typically earn less than college graduates working in other fields, due to issues such as constraints on school funding, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CBS Moneywatch
August 25, 2025
“The [Atlanta] wage growth tracker is consistent with what we’ve found so far this year — wages at the tenth percentile are growing much more slowly than for middle [and] high wage workers, and, this is a clear reversal of the pattern in the postpandemic labor market,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told The Hill.
…
“As softer labor markets are hurting their wage growth, faster price inflation [driven in part by tariffs] is pinching workers on the cost side,” Bivens told The Hill. “It seems like a complete lock that after very rapid real wage growth in the postpandemic recovery that low-wage workers are going to end 2025 much worse off than they have in years.”
The Hill
August 25, 2025
The analysis compares median earnings data from the U.S. Census Bureau with cost of living estimates from the Economic Policy Institute to assess how far a graduate’s income goes across the country.
Upgraded Points
August 25, 2025
The website used sources including the US Census Bureau 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP), US Census Bureau 2023 American Community Survey, Department of Labor, Zillow and EPI Economic Policy Institute.
Asbury Park Press
August 25, 2025
Having children isn’t what it used to be, either. For boomers, raising a child cost $4,000 a year. While in 2023, that figure skyrocketed, now you need almost $18,000 , making it four times harder to have a family.
And that’s not even considering that childcare alone costs $13,128 per child per year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which represents between 10% of income for couples and 35% for single parents.
El Tiempo Latino
August 25, 2025
The average U.K. full-time worker earned £37,430 last year, or 122 times less than the typical FTSE 100 chief. That gap is even higher in the U.S., where the bosses of the biggest listed companies made around 290 times that of the average worker in 2023, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
August 25, 2025
“The non-enforcement policy announcement is essentially making what they plan to do through the legal process effective now already,” said Samantha Sanders, director of government affairs and advocacy at Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on economic issues that impact workers.
“Most of these workers are going to rely on the federal government to enforce their rights on this,” Sanders said.
WESA (Pittsburgh NPR)
August 25, 2025