As corporate tax obligations have declined, CEO pay has skyrocketed. According to Office of Management and Budget data and Economic Policy Institute research, when corporate tax receipts made up 21.8 percent of all federal revenue in 1965, the average CEO-to-median worker pay ratio was 21 to 1. After the 2017 Republican tax cuts, corporations plowed significant windfalls into stock buybacks and executive bonuses. By 2019, corporate tax receipts had fallen to just 6.6 percent of federal revenue and the average pay ratio had risen to 320 to 1.
Counterpunch
July 16, 2021
But Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, disputes that the labor market was all that tight to begin with. “We still have a huge jobs shortfall,” she told me via email, but “the data suggests that the hole is filling in rather steadily.” Subtract from new May hires all the firings and resignations that occurred that month, she noted, and that nets 609,000 jobs. That’s significantly higher than the 462,000 average for March, April, and May. And of course payroll employment has been rising for months. May’s quits rate of 2.5 percent, Gould said, isn’t much higher than it was before the pandemic tanked the economy; from October 2019 through February 2020 the quits rate was 2.3 percent.
New Republic
July 16, 2021
Research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute shows that tens of millions of workers in industries like construction and hospitality are required to sign non-compete agreements when they get hired. In fact, roughly half of all private-sector businesses require at least some of their employees to sign such agreements, and a third of businesses require all employees to do so, regardless of their job title or responsibilities.
Money
July 16, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, almost half — or 49.4% to be exact — of all businesses ask employees upon hiring to sign a noncompete contract that effectively prohibits where a person can work in the future or for whom. And while it may be more standard for chief executives or corporate higher-ups with access to sensitive trade secrets, noncompete clauses have increasingly become de rigeuer in the lower ranks of the workforce as well.
Courthouse News Service
July 16, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said Thursday that “noncompetes are ubiquitous, harmful to wages and to competition, and part of a growing trend of employers requiring workers to sign away their rights.”
Truthout
July 16, 2021
The justification for the 2017 tax cuts was that lower taxes on companies would create more jobs and enable growth. But according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute, companies paying minimal corporate taxes were actually more likely to cut their workforce. The report also showed no data to support the idea that lower tax rates encourage investments or broader economic growth.
The Hill
July 16, 2021
Heidi Shierholz / sr. economist and director of policy, economic policy institute) we know that non compete agreements suppress workers wages and so banning them will remove that wage suppressing effect and actually increase workers wages.
CBS News
July 16, 2021
The Federal Arbitration Act is a 100-year-old law that was initially designed to be a cost effective way for business entities to resolve disputes. A series of Supreme Court decisions beginning in the 1990s expanded its scope. In 1992, just 2 percent of U.S. workers were subject to mandatory arbitration clauses. By 2018, more than 56 percent were, or roughly 60 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The 19th
July 16, 2021
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