Media clips
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Meanwhile, both the steel and lumber industries are strongly urging Biden to keep the tariffs in place. Removing them could prove to be politically unpopular, especially among steel workers in battleground Rust Belt states.
“Why would you kneecap the domestic steel industry when you want to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure?” asked Rob Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “It would be like taking a sledgehammer to kill a flea.”
Scott argued the steel tariffs effectively supported the industry and that removing them, along with quotas limiting imports, would lead to both a “hemorrhaging of jobs” and importing steel that is in many cases worse for the environment than what is made in America.
CNN Business June 2, 2021 -
“There is nothing sacrosanct, or even formal or legitimate, about the current lottery allocation process,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “There was no regulation and no transparency or public comment to inform the process.”
Costa expressed skepticism that the Biden administration would implement a measure devised by the Trump administration, but thought the changes would help improve the H-1B program.
According to Costa’s research, outsourcing IT staffing firms continue to get the majority of the 85,000 visas available in the lottery, petitioning for workers receiving a level one or two wage that are marked at the 17th and 33rd percentile wages of a specific job and region, and below the median pay.
Bloomberg Law June 2, 2021 -
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute calls on prosecutors and state lawmakers to seek criminal punishment of employers for workplace and labor-law violations that are currently addressed through less serious legal sanctions. There are good reasons to be wary of this advice.
EPI’s new report persistently lumps together different kinds of workplace infractions. At one end of the spectrum are offenses that have long been illegal, such as forced labor or theft of premiums intended for unemployment or injury funds. Everyone agrees that a crooked construction boss who skips town without paying his crew’s wages has committed a crime. There is little controversy over the law coming down hard on offenses like these.
High on EPI’s new prosecutorial agenda, however, are legal infractions at the other end of the spectrum. These include so-called employee misclassification, in which workers are designated as independent contractors or supervisors when a court, state labor agency or similar authority thinks they shouldn’t be. Another EPI priority is the sidestepping of prevailing-wage laws, which set public contractors’ wages well above market value. Also on the list are miscalculations by restaurant managers about when and how the law allows them to engage in tip pooling and conduct that an employee considers retaliation for a workplace complaint.
The Wall Street Journal June 2, 2021 -
Many CEOS, at the start of the pandemic, vowed to not take a salary last year to keep layoffs to a minimum. But new preliminary data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the average CEO’s compensation still jumped 16% last year.
Average worker compensation was up just 1.8%.
“The offer by CEOs to forgo salary increases during the pandemic was largely symbolic,” the EPI said in a blog post. “Salaries were stable, but many CEOs pocketed a windfall by cashing in stock options and obtaining vested stock awards, compounding income inequalities laid bare during the past year.”
Fortune June 2, 2021 -
I’m just looking at a study from the Economic Policy Institute this morning shows CEO compensation went up nearly 16% last year. But the average guy only went up 1.8 %. It has a lot to do with the stock packages but it permeates throughout.
WGN News May 28, 2021 -
In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the Constitution, it is a requirement to correct past injustices.
The Laverne Cox Show May 28, 2021 -
CEO pay skyrocketed 15.9% through the pandemic as the rallying stock market boosted compensation packages, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a Thursday blog post. That marks an acceleration from the 14% jump seen in 2019 despite COVID-19 roiling the global economy. EPI cited 281 filings from large firms in its preliminary report.
Conversely, annual compensation for the average American worker rose just 1.8% in 2020. The widening pay gap is captured in EPI’s CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, which rose to 307.3 last year from 276.2 among early reporting companies.
To be sure, CEO salaries broadly shrank through the year. The average salary for chief executives fell 5.2% as businesses paused pay hikes during the health crisis, according to EPI.
Yet a broader measure shows the stock market’s meteoric rise through 2020 more than made up for the slump. Realized direct compensation — which includes salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, stock options, vested stock awards — rallied last year as stocks rebounded from their pandemic lows. Among the 281 early reporting firms analyzed, realized compensation rose to $21.4 billion from $18.5 billion throughout 2020.
Business Insider May 28, 2021 -
DENITSA TSEKOVA: Exactly, yes, we have JP Morgan, and we also have a similar analysis by the Economic Policy Institute saying that that move of all those states opting out of the program, it’s rather a political move and not an economic one. So currently, we have 24 states opting out of some or all federal unemployment programs. And all of these states have a Republican governor. But the economic conditions across those states are very different.
So looking at the JPMorgan analysis, they look at unemployment rates, earnings growth, and participation rates in those states. And they are very different in the different states. For example, some of the states opting out of the programs may have a very tight labor market and strong earnings growth, which may signal a potential for worker shortage and tie into that whole debate that there are not enough workers to hire.
But this is not the case for many of the other states are opting out of the program. For example, Texas, their unemployment rate in April was 6.7%, which is almost double its pre-pandemic level. So in states like Texas, the unemployment rate is a long way from recovering to pre-pandemic level. While in other states that are opting out of the program, the unemployment rate has pretty much recovered.
Yahoo Finance May 28, 2021 -
The math, again, is simple: Shortages have gone up because salaries have gone down. The Economic Policy Institute reported that teacher pay, adjusted for inflation, declined from 1996 to 2017.
Teacher deficits and departures hurt students because inexperienced educators often fill the vacancies. But even when children have skilled, veteran instructors, the quality of their education is compromised if these teachers are underpaid.
The New York Times May 28, 2021 -
Vox’s Emily Stewart talks with Janelle Jones, chief economist at the Labor Department, about what’s actually going on with the US economy — and who are the workers most dramatically affected by the pandemic. They discuss the tasks ahead in an economic recovery, who should receive the most help, and how to put policies in place that do more than just return to the status quo.
Host: Emily Stewart (@EmilyStewartM), Senior Reporter, Vox
Guest: Janelle Jones (@janellecj), Chief Economist, Department of Labor
References:
- “U.S. Labor Shortage? Unlikely. Here’s Why” by Heidi Shierholz (May 4, The Commons blog, Initiative for Public Discourse)
- “Lumber mania is sweeping North America” by Emily Stewart (May 3, Vox)
- “Black workers have made no progress in closing earning gaps with white men since 2000” by Elise Gould, Janelle Jones, and Zane Mokhiber (Sept. 12, 2018, Working Economics Blog)
- “The U.S. economy could use some ‘overheating’” by Josh Bivens (Jan. 14, Working Economics Blog)
Vox Conversations May 28, 2021