Media clips
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In 2017, economists from the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Diego published a study on the impact of the H-1B program on jobs and wages over an eight-year period ending in 2001. They found that in the absence of immigration, wages for American computer scientists would have been 2.6 percent to 5.1 percent higher. The biggest winners, during that period, of course, were tech companies that raked in “substantially higher profits due to immigration.” Most recently, the Economic Policy Institute reported in 2020 that 60 percent of H-1B positions certified by DOL are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the underlying occupations. Again, the real winners are the employers of underpaid foreign workers.
Newsweek March 12, 2021 -
The social divide between those who have the opportunity to work from home and those who don’t is particularly stark when the data is broken down by race and ethnicity. According to the CDC, people of color are “disproportionately represented in essential work settings.” The Economic Policy Institute reported in June that Black workers in particular are more likely to work frontline jobs in public transportation, the postal service, health care and other sectors.
PBS March 12, 2021 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of December 2020, 25.7 million workers in the US remain officially unemployed, otherwise out of work due to the pandemic, or have experienced a reduction in work hours or pay. The National Restaurant Association estimated that the pandemic cost the food industry $240 billion in 2020—driving businesses to make big changes to stay relevant.
QSR Magazine March 12, 2021 -
“Workers are going to have less retirement security in the future,” Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, told me recently. “Unless something changes, there’s going to be a lot more hardship soon.”
MarketWatch March 12, 2021 -
The tactics are “so typical that it’s truly sad,” said Celine McNicholas, general counsel at the Economic Policy Institute and a former special counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees private-sector union elections.
“It isn’t just Amazon ― this is the standard playbook,” McNicholas explained. Employers collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars on outside firms “because unions do improve workers’ lives,” she said. “These firms feed off that.”
The Huffington Post March 12, 2021 -
Legal barriers to LGBTQ+ equity are undergirded by disproportionate poverty levels among queer families of color. The Williams Institute estimates that Black LGBTQ+ couples earn less than non-LGBTQ+ couples, while Black female-headed same-sex households earn approximately $20,000 less than Black male same-sex households. African American lesbians in particular are more likely to be raising children while being segregated into low-wage jobs with few benefits and nominal workplace protections. It is projected that the child allowance would cut child poverty in half, with African American and Indigenous families reaping the greatest benefits. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over thirty percent of Black workers would get a raise if the federal minimum wage increases. LGBTQ+ families of color would directly benefit because many Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming rank and file workers are employed in low-wage service and food sector jobs.
The Humanist March 12, 2021 -
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) studies show that “Black-white wage gaps are large and have gotten worse in the last 20 years,” EPI economist Elise Gould wrote in a blog post last year. “Even Black workers with an advanced degree experience a significant wage gap compared with their white counterparts.”
SHRM March 12, 2021 -
The big picture: The PRO Act would restrict companies like Uber and Lyft from classifying workers as independent contractors and improve protections for workers’ right to strike, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios March 12, 2021 -
Raising the minimum wage would overwhelmingly benefit women and, consequently, it would benefit queer women who cohabitate. According to the Economics Policy Institute, 59 percent of workers whose lives would improve from a $15 minimum wage are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Latinx or Black. According to the Center for American Progress, nearly one in three bisexual women ages 18-44 lives in poverty, and one in five LGBTQ women living alone lives in poverty. While some studies say that $15 an hour won’t be enough for many U.S. families, the raise would have a significant impact on the gender and racial pay gap and start a necessary process of wage redistribution. The current $7.25 minimum hourly rate was set in 2009, which means minimum wage workers have lost about $3,000 a year due to the rising cost of living, according to the Economic Policy Institute. As Sinema uses her identity as a woman to cynically dismiss the very fair and necessary criticism about her vote, women of color and queer women will struggle to make ends meet this month, and for every month in the foreseeable future until the Senate holds an open debate on raising the minimum wage. While it may have been exciting to witness Sinema become America’s first openly bisexual senator and watch her use of colorful wigs on the floor, her latest vote begs the question: How valuable is bisexual representation in the Senate if the bisexual woman in question is voting against the best interests of queer women at large? What is the use of representation if it does not translate to material changes for the people who inhabit those identities?
Bitch Media March 12, 2021 -
According to congressional testimony from the Economic Policy Institute last month, “Due to the impacts of structural racism and sexism, women and Black and Hispanic men are concentrated in low-wage jobs” and would greatly benefit from a higher minimum wage.
People for the American Way March 12, 2021