The letter was spearheaded by the American Economic Liberties Project, a non-profit focused on anti-monopoly policies, and People’s Action, a network of community groups. Other progressive groups that signed on include the Working Families Party, Public Citizen, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
Huffington Post
February 26, 2021
A national minimum wage of $15 would mean around one in five Americans earns more, the Economic Policy Institute found. It could also help reduce income equality, its research found, with women, minorities, and frontline workers benefiting the most.
Business Insider
February 26, 2021
Romney and Cotton’s plan would only raise wages for around 3 percent of American workers, compared to 21.2 percent of workers under the Democratic proposal, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute.
Newsweek
February 26, 2021
“We’ve lost 10 million jobs in the COVID-19 recession,” Robert E. Scott, senior economist at Economic Policy Institute, said. “We need to make those jobs up.”
Newsy
February 26, 2021
The letter was spearheaded by the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly nonprofit, and People’s Action, a network of community organizations. The coalition included several advocacy groups, such as Public Citizen; think tanks, such as the Economic Policy Institute; as well as organized labor stalwarts like Unite Here, a union of 300,000 service workers; the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 50,000 airline workers; and additional progressive groups.
Common Dreams
February 26, 2021
According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank, the Romney-Cotton plan would leave 27 million fewer American workers with a pay increase in comparison to Democrats’ proposal—with 11 million fewer Black and Hispanic workers and 16 million fewer women benefiting from the GOP plan. What’s more, it would continue the trend that has seen the federal minimum wage steadily decline in recent decades when adjusted for inflation, according to the think tank.
“Romney-Cotton’s $10 target by 2025 is the equivalent of $9.19 per hour in today’s dollars, about 13% less than what the minimum wage was at its high-water mark in 1968,” the EPI’s Ben Zipperer and Daniel Costa wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “It is unconscionable that we should pay the lowest-wage workers today less than what they earned five decades ago, while the economy’s productivity has more than doubled over the last 50 years.”
Fortune
February 26, 2021
The better measurement, however, is the median wage. It indicates what the typical worker makes. The median marks the halfway point in wages with half of workers making more, half less. The median wage grew 6.9%, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute shows.
DC Report
February 25, 2021
The disparities widen when broken down by race, even for those with the same level of education. A report from the Economic Policy Institute showed that at every level of education, the Black unemployment rate is much higher than the white unemployment rate.
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
February 25, 2021
The median net worth of Black families is $142,330 — or just one-seventh of the $980,550 in wealth accumulated by white Americans, according to a new study from LendingTree that draws on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2020 Economic Policy Institute report, and various Federal Reserve reports. The difference can have long-lasting impacts.
Yahoo
February 25, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a $15 federal minimum wage could substantially reduce racial and gender pay gaps. Nearly 60% of the workers who would see a pay hike are women, and about one-third of African American workers and one-quarter of Latino workers would get a raise.
WSBT
February 25, 2021