Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to Barack Obama‘s secretary of labor, is a strong advocate for stimulus payments and believes their benefits are crucial for struggling Americans as well as the nation’s economic recovery—even if their full contributions to the economy take time to materialize. Shierholz was one of 120 economists who signed an open letter urging Congress to adopt Biden’s plan to deliver $1,400 checks last November.
“One thing that’s tricky is the stimulus payments have happened…in combination with increases in unemployment insurance and so it’s hard to untangle [the individual effects of each policy],” Shierholz told Newsweek. “It’s hard to separate the two, but those direct payments to people have had a big impact on the economy.” She referenced research conducted by organizations like the Urban Institute, which showed that last year’s stimulus payments and expanded unemployment insurance benefits prevented millions of people from entering poverty.
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Most people who would get the help are those who need it most. A new Economic Policy Institute study of employment last year put into numbers what everybody can see with their own eyes: When the bottom dropped out of the economy a year ago, the bottom dropped out most for people on the bottom.
More than one-quarter (27.1%) of the lowest-wage workers, those in the bottom quarter of income standings—some 7.885 million—lost their jobs to the pandemic and its economic impact, EPI reported. Before that, they made $14 an hour, or less. One-sixth, or 3.27 million people, in the second-lowest income group lost their jobs, too. But the story was different for the top half of the income scale. The middle-income group—the third-lowest—added 586,658 workers. The richest fourth added almost a million workers (980,955).
People’s World
March 1, 2021
A 2019 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute finds the federal minimum wage in 2019 had 17% less purchasing power than it did 10 years ago, and 31% less than the minimum wage in 1968.
Forbes
March 1, 2021
The federal minimum wage has not been increased by Congress since 2009. According to the pro-wage increase Economic Policy Institute, a national $15 wage would help a single, adult American earner without kids achieve a “modest, but adequate standard of living” in “all areas across the United States.”
Jamestown Sun
March 1, 2021
There’s also the matter of basic fairness. Since 2009, the minimum wage has increased by 0.0%. In that same time, CEO salaries have risen a whopping 105%. According to the Economic Policy Institute the average compensation for a top CEO in 2019 was $21.3 million. A year’s salary at the current minimum wage is $15,600. In other words, top wage earners make 1,400 times what they pay folks at the bottom.
Raising the minimum wage is affordable and the correct thing to do. Let’s hope Congress gets to it soon.
PennLive
March 1, 2021
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the U.S., released a fact sheet detailing the transformative potential of the Raise the Wage Act. According to EPI data, the wage increase would benefit nearly 32 million working people — or 21% of the entire U.S. workforce — resulting in an extra $3,300 in annual income on average per affected individual. Notably, 23% of those workers are either a Black or Latinx woman, and more than one in four (28%) have children.
Teen Vogue
March 1, 2021
While the demand for a $15 minimum wage has become a central plank in the progressive agenda over the last decade, it’s worth being clear about the scale of change it would actually bring about. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising the wage would benefit 32 million workers. Hundreds of thousands would be lifted out of poverty.
New Republic
March 1, 2021
“The real thing that I’m encouraged by is that the president was willing to go on the record about a specific organizing drive,” Celine McNicholas, the director of government affairs and labor counsel at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told me, noting that previous Democratic presidents generally tended to go on record “in terms of a broader right to organize.”
…
“I do think that Biden wants to be every bit as pro-union a president as he campaigned as,” McNicholas told me. Labor advocates were also pleased when he fired Peter Robb, the previous general counsel of the NLRB, because Robb was widely seen as a foe of labor organizing.
Washington Post
March 1, 2021
The pandemic has disproportionately affected the employment of Black and Hispanic workers. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in an analysis that Black workers are less likely to be in jobs that can be done remotely and more likely to be in jobs considered essential or in jobs that have experienced major job losses amid the pandemic.
Business Insider
March 1, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 29 states already have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. A large portion of those states raise the amount automatically with inflation.
Who are these minimum-wage workers? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says they’re mostly young, and they are less likely to have more than a high school education. They are more likely to be working part-time than full-time. They are mostly female and mostly unmarried.
It’s really not all that surprising, I guess, that a U.S. senator like Thune might have trouble identifying with hundreds of thousands of workers earning minimum wage.
The Herald Bulletin
March 1, 2021