As schools reopen in more US communities this week, the cost crisis is further squeezing teachers. Just ask any teacher who had to his the store this month for classroom supplies…. The costs add up.
A new report this morning from the Economic Policy Institute in DC argues there is also a teacher “pay penalty” that’s worsening nationwide. Their report found teacher salaries aren’t growing nearly as fast as wages in other professions. This was a topline finding of the study, “Teachers earned on average 74.8 cents on the dollar in 2025 compared with other college graduates—much less than the relative 93.9 cents on the dollar that teachers earned in 1996.”
Scott MacFarlane Reports Substack
August 31, 2026
Later, we discuss the impact deportations are having on the economy. The Economic Policy Institute has developed a tool that shows how money spent on the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which enabled the Trump administration to pay for mass deportations, could have been used in other areas of our economy. The money is broken down by economic sector and geographic region. We’ll discuss the numbers in North Carolina and the greater Charlotte region.
WFAE (Charlotte)
August 31, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute estimates teachers earn just 73 cents for every dollar made by similarly educated professionals.
Fortune
August 31, 2026
Nearly a decade ago about 60 million American workers lacked access to protect their employment rights due to forced arbitration, which reduced employers’ liability for employment law violations, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Milwaukee Courier
August 31, 2026
The report shows that women left the workforce, though it doesn’t record why. Yet, the forces that keep weighing on working women continue surfacing. Caregiving and the cost of child care were the No. 1 reason women left their jobs last year according to data by Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on advancing women in the workplace. On average, the annual cost of child care in the US is over $13,000. In Washington, DC is more than $28,000 annually for infant care, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Inc.
August 31, 2026
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute and Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) finds that teachers are still paying a penalty for choosing a classroom career instead of comparable professions.
The new report shows that the teacher pay penalty for 2025 stands at 25.2%, meaning that teachers earn about 25% less than college graduates in other professions. This is a slight improvement over the 2024 figure of 26.9%, but two decades of study still shows a steady decline of teacher earning power.
Forbes
August 31, 2026
That structure produces dramatically smaller pay gaps. According to the The Democracy at Work Institute and the USFWC’s recent annual report, the median top-to-bottom pay ratio among worker cooperatives is just 1.44-to-1. By comparison, Economic Policy Institute analysis found that CEOs at large U.S. firms earned roughly 281 times as much as the typical worker in 2024.
Inequality.org
August 31, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute reported that as of August of 2025, there were 21,200 fewer school bus drivers employed nationwide than there were six years earlier, representing a decrease of about 9.5 percent.
Porcupine Soup News (New York)
August 31, 2026
The figures come from an Axios analysis built on a cost calculator from the Economic Policy Institute, which estimated local taxpayer shares using each area’s share of federal income taxes. The Trump administration is slated to spend $269 billion on deportations over the course of his second term, funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, regular appropriations, and other repurposed funds, the outlet reported. Statewide, Texas could pay toward an estimated $23 billion of that total.
Hoodline
August 31, 2026
Arizona Republic
August 31, 2026