Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia already have minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25. And 45 localities have adopted minimum wages above their states’ minimum. Still, raising the federal minimum to $15 by 2025 would increase earnings for an estimated 32 million people, or 21% of the U.S. workforce, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Notably, EPI says, the wage hike would boost income for people of color, who make up a disproportionate share of low-wage workers. Nearly one-third of African-American workers and one-quarter of Latino workers would see raises.
NPR
February 8, 2021
A 2019 study by the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute found that employers may be becoming more brazen in union busting. Employers were charged with violating federal law in 41.5 percent of all union election campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 and 2017. That’s a higher rate than recorded during the 2000s.
Maine Beacon
February 8, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that supports a $15 minimum wage, estimates that nearly 32 million workers across the country — including 1.24 million in Michigan —would see higher wages as a result of the increase.
This figure means that 28.5% of Michigan’s workforce would see a pay hike of around $3,000 annually, the institute said. It also noted that, in counties with available data, around 40% of Black workers would see a pay increase of approximately $3,500 annually.
Another hot aspect of the debate is possible job loss if businesses are forced to pay employees more for seemingly the same amount of work.
The Economic Policy Institute cited a study arguing that “modest increases in the minimum wage have not led to detectable job losses.”
Manistee News Advocate
February 8, 2021
Cites EPI research on minimum wage.
Hill TV
February 8, 2021
“The Biden plan is an intentional overreach because, as I understand it, they think the economy has just run too cold for a very long time — since the Great Recession — and we need a period of very strong growth to repair the damage,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Bivens also took issue with the idea that a large stimulus measure now would sap Biden of political, and literal, capital later. A public perception that the White House had met the current economic problems effectively would “strengthen their pitch” for later action, Bivens contended.
The Hill
February 8, 2021
At the same time, wage growth has been tepid for most Americans with the 2019 median wage of $19.33 an hour translating to roughly $40,000 for a full time workers, according to the left leaning, Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The EPI also reported that between 1979 and 2019, the top 1 percent of earners enjoyed 160 percent income growth, while the bottom 90 percent of earners saw stagnating wages that rose only 26 percent of the same 40 year period. “In every period since 1979, wages for the bottom 90% were continuously redistributed upward to the top 10% and frequently to the very highest 1.0% and 0.1%,” it concluded.
Forbes
February 8, 2021
While the national unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7 percent in April last year, Black women’s unemployment rate stood at 16.9 percent and for Latinas it was 20.2 percent, according to an analysis of government data by the Economic Policy Institute.
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In an address on Friday, Biden said raising the minimum wage is the “real answer to the crisis we’re in.” More than half of the workers who would benefit from a wage increase are women, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
NBC News
February 8, 2021
It would also give nearly 32 million Americans a raise, including about one-third of Black workers.
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Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said in an email to Insider that when the minimum wage is increased, employers need to raise wages to retain or recruit people already making that rate.
But the “ripple” effect of the minimum wage raising — raises that those making above $15 would get as the minimum wage labor market becomes better paid — generally comes in “just a few dollars above the minimum wage, like around $17-$18 in the case of a $15 minimum wage.”
But, Zipperer said, median wages are higher than that — and current trends show that median wage in 2025 is likely to be around $22. Zipperer believes a $15 minimum wage in 2025 won’t impact median wages.
“In order to lift wages for the median or typical worker in the middle of the wage distribution, we need other strategies, like increasing the bargaining power of workers through unionization or making sure we run a very tight, full-employment labor market,” he said.
Business Insider
February 8, 2021
The dynamic also makes the U.S. unemployment rate appear artificially low, they said, due to how federal officials quantify the jobless metric.
“It’s bad for individuals, it’s bad for human suffering, harms the overall economy and drags this [downturn] out even more,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, and former chief economist at the Labor Department.
CNBC
February 8, 2021
Others expressed skepticism on the CBO’s analysis of the potential for employment declines, saying the agency did not give appropriate weight to the highest-quality studies available on the impact of minimum wage increases on employment versus lower-quality research. “We have to be really skeptical of their assessment of the employment impact,” says Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s really not a stretch to say that a new consensus has emerged among economists that minimum wage increases have raised wages without substantial job loss. And I think CBO assessment of the literature has just not caught up yet,” Shierholz added.
CNBC
February 8, 2021