Black people also suffer inequities in the labor market. For fifty years now, the unemployment rate of Black people has remained twice the rate of whites. In Washington, D.C., the city where John Thompson and I were born and raised, the jobless rate for Black people was more than six times the rate of whites in 2019. And Black households in 2019 earned just 61 cents on the dollar when compared to white households, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Progressive
February 22, 2021
When Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2018, a move now being debated in Congress for all American workers, some believed it would pressure other companies to lift pay levels as well — particularly rival retailers and warehouse employers.
“This is going to be a big deal for very low-wage workers,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based economic think tank said at the time. “It’s going to compel other businesses to raise wages as well.”
Gainesville Times
February 22, 2021
We talked to Celine McNicholas, Director of Government Affairs and Labor Counsel with the Economic Policy Institute, to get the low-down on what we can expect, and dare to hope for.
Dissent Magazine
February 22, 2021
The federal minimum wage is the baseline for employers in the state. A single adult needs to earn $11.76 per hour working full time to meet her basic needs in South Carolina, $4 more than the current minimum wage. According to David Cooper at Economic Policy Institute, the wages of roughly 684,000 South Carolina workers — a third of the state’s workforce — would increase if the state adopted a $15 minimum wage by 2025.
Statehouse Report
February 22, 2021
As David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, notes in the report, minimum wage hikes result in stronger buying power to workers. In turn, hospitality businesses benefit from the extra purchases. “Tax breaks or deferrals, rent subsidies, expanded lending programs, and other business-oriented relief measures all help firms weather a downturn,” Cooper says, “but they’re not going to drive additional spending in the same way that a minimum wage hike does.”
Mother Jones
February 22, 2021
Of the workers who will benefit from a $15 federal minimum wage hike, 59% are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Black or Latina, reports the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
February 22, 2021
“Because a higher minimum wage lifts up lower-income households — although some middle-income households benefit, too — it is likely to have a stronger effect than many — possibly even most — other recession response measures state and local policymakers might consider,” Dave Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said in One Fair Wage’s report.
Restaurant Dive
February 22, 2021
But without hundreds of billions in new federal aid, state and local governments won’t have the money to do that, said Julia Wolfe at the Economic Policy Institute.
“Many of them will be tempted to pursue austerity — the same mistake that they made last time around, in the Great Recession,” Wolfe said, after which it took years to restore public sector employment.
Marketplace
February 22, 2021
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said that $15 in 2025 would be an “appropriate” level since it would put a dent in “poverty wages.”
“There is a kind of a large hole that we’ve dug ourselves in having low minimum wages relative to what workers need,” he told Insider. “And so then I think it does make sense to have some kind of gradual set of increases, because you do want to give time for some businesses to accommodate the higher wage schedule.”
Business Insider
February 22, 2021