More money is stolen each year in wage theft than in property crimes.
A 2017 report by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that “the total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year,” per The Guardian. That’s more than the value of stolen goods in all property crimes, according to the latest FBI statistics.
The Center for Public Integrity
December 23, 2021
“The thing that we really need to be careful about is making sure that we are sufficiently measuring what that really means,” said Valerie Wilson, Director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.
KIRO
December 23, 2021
Black men, for instance, are paid just $0.71 for every dollar paid to white men, the Economic Policy Institute reported in 2020.
Business Insider
December 23, 2021
In a free market economy, governments can be lobbied or influenced to set, or not set, regulations and rules. For example, the federal government, through its inaction on the federal minimum wage law, in part, has traditionally created a lack of mobility for employees on the lower end of the labor market. Unwittingly, now, that inaction on the federal minimum wage is creating mobility for employees working at or around the minimum wage. Throughout history, Congress has raised the minimum wage only 22 times. The current level, at $7.25 an hour, was set in 2009 and has not kept up with real economic growth (as noted by the Economic Policy Institute).
Forbes
December 23, 2021
“The quits are people who are quitting their job to take another job,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank and a former Labor Department economist in the Obama administration, told Nightly.
Politico
December 23, 2021
The problem is, historically it’s not clear that there has been a labor shortage in tech. Skeptics point to the fact that median wages in the sector haven’t increased everywhere in the country, or all that dramatically. “What happens when there’s something in short supply?” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University and research associate with the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “You have a price mechanism. In this case, it would be wages. So, anything in shortage you’d see wages going through the roof.” The fact that there haven’t been dramatic wage spikes, he says, suggests that claims of labor shortages in the U.S. are overblown.
Politico
December 23, 2021
Recent research from the Economic Policy Institute shows farm workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. workforce, earning $14.62 per hour on average in 2020, which is just 60% — or three-fifths — of what production and non-supervisory, non-farm workers earned at $24.67.
Daily News
December 23, 2021
“Unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions,” said Asha Banerjee, economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and co-author of the report. “But the benefits of unions extend far beyond the workplace. The data suggest that unions also give workers a voice in shaping their communities and political representation.”
Common Dreams
December 22, 2021
Robber barons become rich through ruthless and unscrupulous business practices. Members of both political parties have served and continue to serve their interests. In 2019, the Economic Policy Institute reported “CEO compensation had grown 940% since 1978 and a typical worker compensation had risen only 12% during that time.” This inequity was made possible by politicians who, in exchange for corporate money to fund their campaigns and line their pockets, disemboweled the federal and state tax laws, as well as environmental regulations, etc.
The Herald Times
December 22, 2021