A 2020 report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) looked at how CEO compensation has grown in contrast to workers’ wages. Focusing on “realized” compensation for CEOs – which “counts stock awards when vested and stock options when cashed in rather than when granted” – EPI found that, in 2019, the ratio between CEO pay and the typical worker’s pay was 320-to-1.
Markets Insider
March 23, 2021
Shareholders typically don’t balk at lavish rewards for executives so long as they line up with a company’s performance. In recent decades, payouts have boomed; between 1978 and 2018, CEO compensation grew by more than 1,000%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN
March 23, 2021
Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. The clearest way for federal policymakers to raise essential workers’ wages permanently is to—finally—raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. For too long, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 per hour. The wages for essential care workers are so low that nearly 20% of them live in poverty, and more than 40% rely on some form of public assistance; the typical wages for a grocery cashier would put a family of four below the poverty line. A $15 per hour federal minimum wage would disproportionately benefit essential workers such as cashiers, care workers, security guards, warehouse workers, retail staff, nursing assistants, and cleaners. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that a $15 federal minimum wage would lift the pay of 32 million workers, over 60% of whom are essential or frontline workers. While Democrats’ push to include a $15 minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan failed, the Biden administration and Democratic leaders in Congress have pledged continued support for it. Without additional senators’ backing, successful passage of a minimum wage increase may require compromises such as a more gradual increase, a lower hourly raise, regionally adjusted wages, and/or additional support for businesses.
Brookings Institution
March 19, 2021
While CEOs have always made more than rank-and-file workers, the ratio has ballooned in recent decades — and wages for top executives have increased dramatically faster than average workers’. The Economic Policy Institute found CEO compensation had surged 940% from 1978 to 2018 while the typical worker pay had risen only 12% over the same timeframe.
CBS News
March 19, 2021
And those outraged Americans, to a remarkable extent, succeeded. By the mid 1960s, Economic Policy Institute research details, corporate chiefs were averaging no more than 20 to 25 times the pay of America’s typical workers.
Inequality.org
March 19, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank, reports that 51% of workers who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage nationally are adults between the ages of 25 and 54, with only 10% being teenagers. Fifty-four percent work full time, and 28% have children, per the institute, which also says a wage hike would particularly benefit people of color.
Bay to Bay News
March 19, 2021
It was Larry Mishel and other economists at the Economic Policy Institute who began the annual calculations of this ratio two decades ago. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, required the Securities and Exchange Commission to calculate that ratio annually, too, but it took the Wall Street–friendly SEC eight years to comply with the act’s mandate. More than a decade ago, Sarah Anderson and other economists at the Institute for Policy Studies began calling for a ratio tax, and around then, I began banging the drum for it in my columns at both the Prospect and The Washington Post. After reading one such column, a member of the Portland, Oregon, city council persuaded his colleagues to enact such a tax in 2016, and last November, voters in San Francisco enacted it by referendum. Such a tax would clearly have far greater impact, however, if applied nationwide.
The American Prospect
March 19, 2021
Hira, along with Rutgers University public policy professor Hal Salzman and Daniel Costa, a director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in jointly submitted comments about the proposed rule to the Labor Department, asserted that those private wage surveys — which allow companies to set H-1B pay based on purchased survey data rather than U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage estimates — can be unreliable and provide a loophole for employers.
Silicon Valley
March 19, 2021
“Men at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution saw their wages rise in 2019: a 2.6% increase at the 50th percentile and a striking 5.7% increase at the 10th percentile, along with a 4.2% increase at the 20th percentile,” according to the 2019 yearly report, by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute.
Breitbart
March 19, 2021
“According to the Economic Policy Institute, 63% of minimum wage earners in this country are older than 25,” he said. “Sixty percent of low-wage workers are women, 51% are people of color, and 50% are working full-time. Minimum wage earners are farm workers, or grocery store workers, or janitors, or delivery drivers; the men and women who care for our children and seniors every day, and even some of our state employees.”
WDEL
March 19, 2021