Part of the reason for the shortage has to do with pay and working conditions. On average, teachers make roughly 20% less than other college graduates, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on worker issues.
Savannah Morning News
March 8, 2021
The Biden proposal will make federal resources available to address both. It has the potential to create millions of new jobs in this country, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Jobs building the material that will make up our infrastructure are the kind that pay a premium wage to workers with less than a four-year degree. They’re precisely the kind the market needs more of right now.
Bay to Bay News
March 8, 2021
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, calculated that employers would need to add an additional 2.4 million jobs to make up for those that would have been gained if COVID-19 had not derailed the economy.
Axios
March 8, 2021
We also need to acknowledge the huge impact a minimum wage hike would have on the people who have been most harmed by the pandemic. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently released an analysis of wages in the past year and found that average, inflation-adjusted wages in the U.S. had actually gone up in 2020. Great news, right? Wrong. The EPI found that average wages had increased because the makeup of the American workforce had changed so drastically — a huge proportion of those who lost their jobs during the pandemic were those making low wages, or around $14 per hour or less. In contrast, people making $25 per hour and above actually saw job gains overall in 2020.
Refinery29
March 8, 2021
“In the United States, there’s a clear gender story here, but in the aggregate, it’s not about white women,” noted Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, in a blog post. “Black and Hispanic women experienced the most significant and disproportionate job losses in the pandemic recession.”
CBS Moneywatch
March 8, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute analyzed the report and found that more than 25 million workers have been harmed by the dire state of the economy during the pandemic. The EPI concluded that, “Congress must pass the full $1.9 trillion relief package immediately.”
Rising Up with Sonali
March 8, 2021
Not coincidently, CEO compensation packages became linked to share price, further rewarding short-term financial machinations to boost quarterly earnings, rather than making more strategic investments in plant, equipment and worker training. For management, this shift in priorities, often referred to as the era of “shareholder preeminence,” has paid off handsomely: According to the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, since 1978, inflation-adjusted CEO compensation has risen by over 900 percent, but the average American worker has realized an increase of just under 11 percent. Yet when Americans begin to protest the inequality, “socialist” labels are quickly employed to create wedges between those most impacted, effectively discouraging the formation of electorally significant coalitions of workers.
Holland Sentinel
March 8, 2021
Women of color make up 52 percent of the domestic labor force, which numbers about 2 million in the U.S., including caregivers, cleaners, nannies and other workers, according to a report last year from the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. Undocumented immigrants are also about 20 percent of the workforce, which the report suggested could be an undercount.
NBC News
March 8, 2021
According to a range of research compiled by the Economic Policy Institute, increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 would deliver pay increases for nearly 32 million workers, 21 percent of the entire U.S. workforce.
Truthout
March 8, 2021