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
An analysis published last week by the Economic Policy Institute found that just over 3 percent of American workers would see a raise by 2025 under the Romney-Cotton plan, compared with more than 21 percent under the Democrats’ $15 proposal.
Newsweek
March 4, 2021
Massachusetts currently ranks second in the country in childcare costs, clocking in at a whopping $20,913 per year and accounting for 22.7 percent of the median family income in the Commonwealth, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The exorbitant cost of infant care makes it a financially untenable proposition for 95 percent of Massachusetts households.
WBSM
March 4, 2021
A report from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, states that remote teaching has impeded learning, stressing that it is effective only if students have consistent access to technology and if teachers have been trained in remote instruction.
Las Vegas Sun
March 4, 2021
The top-line finding: More than 23.8 million people made less than $15 per hour in 2019, a reliable guide to the population that would benefit from a federal minimum-wage hike to that level. The calculation is based on an analysis of census data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.
Washington Post
March 4, 2021
CEOs earn 940% more in compensation today than they did in 1978, according to the Economic Policy Institute, even as the business world fawns over “corporate social responsibility.” Worker compensation has risen 12% in the same time period.
Deseret News
March 4, 2021
Claire Kovach, senior research analyst at Keystone Research Center and co-author of the report, said data from the Economic Policy Institute showed the increase would put the state on a path to creating a high-wage, high-productivity economy that helps all working Pennsylvanians.
Public News Service
March 4, 2021
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