According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average age of minimum-wage workers is 36; 89 percent are not teenagers; 28 percent have children, and 57 percent work full time, and on average they earn more than half of their families’ total income.
The New York Times
March 1, 2021
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 1, 2021
We have been the last hired and the first fired, even when the economy was good. The Economic Policy Institute found that when the state unemployment rate was 3.5% in the third quarter of 2018, Black unemployment was at 5.4% while white unemployment was at 3.2%.
The Indianapolis Star
March 1, 2021
“There are a lot of people like Janelle in Washington who have technical skills and policy experience, but there are very few who have the kind of vision that she has and an amazing ability for framing,” said John Schmitt, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. “She’ll walk into a situation and immediately see what the core issue is.”
Bloomberg
March 1, 2021
There is lag in the reporting of those numbers, but drops in one program may reflect movement into a different program, rather than a return to the work force, said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
New York Times
March 1, 2021
Costco announced last week it would raise minimum wage for US workers to $16 an hour. There are many misconceptions about minimum wage, who actually benefits from it. The Economic Policy Institute lays it out like this, many people think we’d be bettering the lives of teenagers who work part time after school who want extra spending money. That’s not the reality. The people who would benefit from $15 an hour are, on average, 35 years old, 59% are women, 28% of them have children, 54% of them work full time, and the majority are essential and frontline workers.
MSNBC
March 1, 2021
I think it will pass if it doesn’t have it in it, but that’s a big loss for the country because if you raise the minimum wage as we’ve proposed and as the overwhelming majority of Americans support you are giving a raise to 32 million people, according to the Economic Policy Institute and you’re also helping directly the lives of children.
MSNBC
March 1, 2021
Cites productivity-pay chart.
New York Magazine
March 1, 2021
“The proposals to use the tax system aren’t anybody’s first choice for doing some kind of effective wage increase for low-wage workers,” said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank that’s backed boosting the wage floor to $15 per hour.
Bloomberg Tax
March 1, 2021