In the past 25 years, the minimum wage has only increased $2.50—from $4.75 an hour to $7.25 an hour—and the last increase was in 2009. Furthermore, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Black employees make up 31% of the workforce that would most benefit from an increased minimum wage.
CNBC
February 23, 2021
That’s because 60% of the workforce in this country lives in states with minimum wages below $15 an hour. Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the bump up to $15 would make a big difference for people of color.
“Almost a third of Black workers would see a raise with this minimum wage increase. For Hispanic workers, it’s almost as high — it’s 26%,” she said.
And Shierholz said more than half of the people who’d get a raise with a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage would be women, many supporting families.
NPR Marketplace
February 23, 2021
But Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs and labor counsel at the Economic Policy Institute…[paywall].
Law360
February 23, 2021
24/7 Wall St. reviewed March 2018 cost of living estimates, adjusted for inflation, from financial think tank the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.
24/7 Wall St.
February 23, 2021
In 2019, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor detected millions in wage theft between fiscal years 2000 and 2019. Farm labor contractors were almost one in four of the agricultural violations found in a 14-year span, according to an analysis of the federal data from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research think tank.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
February 23, 2021
The wage increase could directly affect as many as 1,050,000 Michigan workers, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
Michigan Radio
February 23, 2021
Data from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that a quarter of a million West Virginians, about 14% of the population in the state, would directly benefit from a $15 minimum wage.
Those impacted workers would take home, on average, nearly $4,000 extra dollars each year, the economic policy institute estimated. The total annual wage increase for all affected West Virginia workers would be $987 million annually.
Business Insider
February 23, 2021
- Thomas L. Hungerford and Rebecca Thiess, “The Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit” (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2013), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/ib370-earned-income-tax-credit-and-the-child-tax-credit-history-purpose-goals-and-effectiveness/.
Center for American Progress
February 23, 2021
On Trump’s pro-growth economy policies:
“The Trump administration has taken credit for reshoring manufacturing jobs, but the data shows that isn’t true. Nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared under Trump between 2016 and 2018.”
“The U.S. real trade deficit has increased in every year since 2016, reducing GDP growth by roughly 0.25% annually over the past three years. The Trump administration’s overall weak trade agenda, COVID-19 and the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis has wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in U.S. manufacturing.”
The Virginia Gazette
February 23, 2021
Other recent studies have found a $15 minimum wage would result in little to no job loss while boosting payroll tax revenue.
“The bottom line is that the CBO finds that the benefit to low-wage workers of raising the minimum wage far outweighs the cost,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, on a Monday call with reporters.
CNBC
February 23, 2021