According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, the reality is that the average age of minimum wage earners is 35, 59% are women, 28% have children, 54% work full time and the majority of those who would benefit are essential and front-line workers.
Sarasota Herald Tribune
February 8, 2021
Economist Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute points out that we are “down 9.9 million jobs since February 2020,” just before the pandemic hit. And if the economy had kept growing instead of collapsing, we should have 12.1 million more jobs than we do.
Forbes
February 8, 2021
Under Biden’s plan, the pay boost would give 31% of Black and 26% of Latino workers a raise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
CNBC
February 8, 2021
Thea Lee, president of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, praised the NSC staffing moves, saying the White House is seeking to “put workers directly into the international economic policy decision making.”
“Too often worker voices or worker advocates have been brought in after the policy is already formed, and it’s too late at that point to build in a worker rights component or a jobs lens,” said Lee, former AFL-CIO chief international economist and deputy chief of staff.
Bloomberg
February 8, 2021
As stated in an article from the Economic Policy Institute: “A $15 minimum wage would begin to reverse decades of growing pay inequality between the most underpaid workers and workers receiving close to the median wage, particularly along gender and racial lines. For example, minimum wage increases in the late 1960s explained 20% of the decrease in the Black–white earnings gap in the years that followed, whereas failures to adequately increase the minimum wage after 1979 account for almost half of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution.
The Guilfordian
February 5, 2021
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor investigated about one thousand cases of agricultural wage theft, according to the Economic Policy Institute. More than 200,000 workers traveled to the U.S. that year on H-2A visas, and some of their advocates believe wage-theft incidents are much higher.
Public News Service
February 5, 2021
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said minimum wage raises are exceptionally popular among the public. A 2019 Pew Research Survey found that two-thirds of Americans supported raising the minimum wage to $15.
Business Insider
February 5, 2021
In Indiana, the minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13 an hour. If tips combined with hourly wage is less than $7.25, then the employer is required to make up the difference. However, a report published by the Economic Policy Institute in 2014 found widespread violation of this requirement.
The Exponent
February 5, 2021
Meanwhile, Battle and others worry that Black professionals are more likely to experience layoffs during the crisis than their white counterparts. Even in a strong economy, Black workers with college degrees are more likely to be unemployed than white workers with a similar education, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
SHRM
February 5, 2021