The inquiry comes at a time when there’s been growing scrutiny by local labor enforcers over how workers are being treated by companies. A report this week from the Economic Policy Institute’s Terri Gerstein found a growing number of district attorneys and attorneys general are taking on employers over issues ranging from worker misclassification to wage theft. Meanwhile, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are fighting harder than ever to solidify a business model that does not require them to classify certain workers as employees.
CNN Business
May 24, 2021
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that “somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to noncompetes,” which means anywhere from 36 million to 60 million American workers have signed a noncompete agreement in their current job.
Business Insider
May 24, 2021
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline
May 24, 2021
In April, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home, said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.
Shierholz added that unemployment benefits are designed to give workers the time to find jobs that are better suited to their abilities.
“We want people well-matched to their skills and experience,” she said. “That’s what helps the economy run better.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 21, 2021
Republicans have blamed the perceived labor shortages on unemployment benefits, despite economists dismissing the benefits as a driving factor, with data showing labor shortages are confined to the leisure and hospitality sector and show no signs of spilling over to other industries or reducing growth within the leisure and hospitality sector, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
May 21, 2021
CEO compensation soared around 1,200% from 1978 to 2019, far outpacing stock market returns (the S&P 500 Index of large US stocks rallied 740% during that span) and the take home pay for workers, which increased by about 14%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Soaring CEO pay spills into the pay for other executives, resulting in inflated paychecks for a handful of people at the top of the corporate pyramid that doesn’t trickle down to lower-ranked workers, said Lawrence Mishel, distinguished fellow at EPI. This kind of unbalanced renumeration also seeps into the nonprofit sector and universities.
“Executive pay has been the single largest driver of excessive income growth at the very top,” Mishel said. CEOs in particular make six times as much as the top 0.1% of wage earners.
It wasn’t always this way. For the largest public companies, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 320-to-1 in 2019, but the ratio was more like 61-to-1 in 1989 and was 21-to-1 in 1965.
Quartz
May 21, 2021
While the business groups believe the extra federal jobless benefit is discouraging some people from taking jobs, government surveys also show people are reluctant to look for work because they fear contracting COVID-19. In addition, other groups say many women have dropped out of the workforce to care for children and some people are searching for higher paying jobs with benefits.
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argued in a recent commentary that policymakers shouldn’t rein in the unemployment benefits.
“Cutting pandemic (unemployment) benefits now, as some states have done or are considering, will not just hurt workers who are depending on federal benefits while they cannot find work or are unable to work, it will also drag on the economy, as those benefits are supporting spending,” the organization said in the post.
Associated Press
May 21, 2021
The nonpartisan, left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said in a blog post last week that some labor shortages have occurred for hospitality and leisure businesses, where wages are typically low, but that they shouldn’t spill into other industries. Furthermore, it said, cutting off the extra benefits could hurt the economy, adding that goal shouldn’t be to “chase” as many adults into jobs as possible but “to provide good options and economic security for all.”
The Associated Press
May 21, 2021
A growing number of prosecutors around the nation are beginning to treat wage theft and other offenses by employers as a criminal matter, instead of relegating enforcement to civil suits and regulatory agencies.
The law-enforcement system is very effective at pressing charges “if someone were to steal an individual’s cell phone, Michael Dougherty, district attorney of Colorado’s Boulder County, said during an online seminar organized by the Economic Policy Institute May 18. “Wage theft has a far greater effect on the individual.”
Labor Press
May 21, 2021
If Colorado’s discoveries are any indication of a national trend, wage theft, especially from low-wage workers of color, is much more pervasive than people realize—and, increasingly, local District Attorneys and state Attorneys General are stepping up enforcement against such corporate thieves.
So says Michael Dougherty, DA for Boulder, Colo., and one of four DAs from around the U.S. whom the Economic Policy Institute convened on May 17 to discuss the issue and a new EPI report on its extent. They also discussed increasing enforcement measures in their areas.
People’s World
May 21, 2021