Democrats have identified a boost to the federal minimum wage as a cornerstone of their economic recovery plan. The proposed wage increase, however, is seeing growing resistance from all sides, which threatens to hold up the bill in the Senate. The minimum wage rate has stood at $7.25 an hour since 2009. By boosting the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, 32 million US workers, or 21% of the workforce, would see their hourly wage lifted, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNET
March 4, 2021
The Wall Street Journal
March 4, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, minimum wage increases in the late 1960s accounted for 20% of the decrease in the Black/white earnings gap in the years that followed. Concomitantly, failures to increase the minimum wage substantially after 1979 account for almost half of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution.
Philadelphia Gay News
March 4, 2021
Logically, it makes sense: If businesses have to pay their employees more, they would resort to raising the prices of their goods or services. And according to Ben Zipperer, an economist with expertise on low-wage labor markets at the Economic Policy Institute — which describes itself as nonpartisan — there’s some truth to it. Research has found that restaurants use small price increases as an adjustment to increased labor costs.
“There are a lot of other expenses when you run a business that have nothing to do with how many minimum wage workers you employ,” he said over Zoom. “For the typical restaurant, labor costs are only 20%-25% — minimum wage labor costs are even less than that. So when the minimum wage goes up, yes, you may need to raise prices a little bit, but you’re going to raise them much less than the actual minimum wage increase.”
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator supports this conclusion. The tool calculates the income level that types of families in different locations need to have a “modest but adequate standard of living,” Zipperer said. That means being able to afford renting an apartment, transportation, food — and for families with kids, day care.
Today Show
March 4, 2021
Humans are creatures of habit; that’s why we thrive when we set and stick to routines. But for those who live at the mercy of an unpredictable or inconsistent work schedule, following any sort of regimen can feel just about impossible — and that inconsistency has a substantial effect on well-being. “Having irregular shift times, including on-call work, is associated with experiencing more frequent stress,” Lonnie Golden, Ph.D., a professor of economics and labor-employment relations at Penn State University, Abington, tells Thrive. This is especially true for hourly-paid workers, who are also more apt to experience work-family conflict, according to Golden’s research for the Economic Policy Institute.
Thrive Global
March 4, 2021
No matter how fiercely you pinch those pennies, there’s really no way around it: An additional baby means additional expenses. In fact, a family of two spends about $13,000 a year on each child, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Consumer Expenditures Survey. Even if you live in a locale with a low cost of living, baby expenses add up fast (you can see just how fast using the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator), so now’s the time to review your spending, according to Carrie.
Romper
March 4, 2021
[10] Elise Gould et al., Not everybody can work from home: Black and Hispanic workers are much less likely to be able to telework, Economic Policy Institute, 2020, https://www.epi.org/blog/black-and-hispanic-workers-are-much-less-likely….
The Center for Law and Social Policy
March 4, 2021
The House proposal would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 – and ensure it keeps pace with inflation thereafter – and end the subminimum wage for tipped workers and workers with disabilities. There is a chance the minimum wage increase may be stricken from the package in the Senate either due to strict budget process rules or the opposition of one or more Democratic senators. As the Economic Policy Institute notes, raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would benefit 27 million workers, lead to a 10-year increase in wages of $333 billion for workers with low wages, and reduce inequality.
Coalition on Human Needs
March 4, 2021
According to a May 4, 2020 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a majority of H-1B employers use the visa program to pay migrant workers below-market wages, and half of the top 30 H-1B employers use an outsourcing business model. This is simply unacceptable and does not reflect how Congress intended the H-1B program to work. While Congress should pass legislation to overhaul the H-1B visa program, DHS and the Department of Labor should use their robust regulatory authority to reform the H-1B program to protect American workers from displacement and migrant workers from exploitation.
Sen. Chuck Grassley
March 4, 2021