An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute published last week found that the Romney-Cotton proposal would only increase wages for 3.2 percent of workers by 2025. That’s significantly less than the Democrats’ Raise the Wage Act, which would see increased wages for just over 21 percent of workers. In different terms, the Democrats’ plan would give a raise to 32.2 million workers while the Republican senators’ proposal would provide a wage hike to less than 5 million workers.
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Research by the Economic Policy Institute in April 2020 estimated that only half of potential unemployment applicants were actually receiving benefits, and as many as 12 million additional people could have filed for unemployment benefits had the process been easier.
Forbes
March 1, 2021
Dear Rep. Schrader,
Regarding your past and current refusal to support a $15/hr. national minimum wage, I would like to know your response to the following two questions that Thea Mei Lee, Economic Policy Institute President, asked at the outset of her Testimony before the Senate Budget Committee’s 2/25 hearing on “Why Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large, Profitable Corporations?”
(1) Why do large, profitable corporations pay such low wages that their employees are eligible for and must rely on federal anti-poverty programs just to make ends meet?
(2) What policies are necessary to address this problem?
https://www.epi.org/publication/our-deeply-broken-labor-market-needs-a-higher-minimum-wage-epi-testimony-for-the-senate-budget-committee/
Lincoln City Homepage
March 1, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average age of minimum-wage workers is 36; 89 percent are not teenagers; 28 percent have children, and 57 percent work full time, and on average they earn more than half of their families’ total income.
The New York Times
March 1, 2021
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 1, 2021
We have been the last hired and the first fired, even when the economy was good. The Economic Policy Institute found that when the state unemployment rate was 3.5% in the third quarter of 2018, Black unemployment was at 5.4% while white unemployment was at 3.2%.
The Indianapolis Star
March 1, 2021
“There are a lot of people like Janelle in Washington who have technical skills and policy experience, but there are very few who have the kind of vision that she has and an amazing ability for framing,” said John Schmitt, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. “She’ll walk into a situation and immediately see what the core issue is.”
Bloomberg
March 1, 2021
There is lag in the reporting of those numbers, but drops in one program may reflect movement into a different program, rather than a return to the work force, said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
New York Times
March 1, 2021
Costco announced last week it would raise minimum wage for US workers to $16 an hour. There are many misconceptions about minimum wage, who actually benefits from it. The Economic Policy Institute lays it out like this, many people think we’d be bettering the lives of teenagers who work part time after school who want extra spending money. That’s not the reality. The people who would benefit from $15 an hour are, on average, 35 years old, 59% are women, 28% of them have children, 54% of them work full time, and the majority are essential and frontline workers.
MSNBC
March 1, 2021