While the opening of an Amazon warehouse increases warehousing employment at the county level by more than 30% after two years, private-sector employment across all industries doesn’t budge, according to a 2018 report by the left-leaning non-profit think tank Economic Policy Institute.
“Our findings of the lack of overall job growth from opening an Amazon fulfillment centers suggest that some sort of employment displacement is taking place, or that the growth in warehousing jobs is too limited to spill over into broad-based employment gains for the overall local economy,” the report said.
MarketWatch
February 3, 2021
Thus, the effect of the inaccurate titles has been to bury a story about massive wage theft. Wage theft is a massive problem in the United States. A 2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute across ten U.S. states found that 2.4 million minimum wage workers were being defrauded out of an average of $64 per week, equating to $8 billion annual losses. For many, their employer is far more likely to steal from them than a masked robber. Yet this is rarely the sort of violation that “tough on crime” politicians have in mind when they deploy that rhetoric. And when the public thinks of crime, wage theft is rarely high on the list, thanks, in no small part, to how the media downplays corporate crime where the rich steal from the poor.Mint
Mint Press News
February 3, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said a $15 minimum wage would lower expenditures on public-assistance programs by between $13.4 billion and $31 billion annually, in the form of fewer tax credits and less nutrition assistance. Those effects are why some Democrats say a minimum-wage increase could advance through a process known as reconciliation, requiring just a simple majority in the Senate.
Fox Business
February 3, 2021
If this change takes place, it’s estimated that nearly 32 million workers will see an increase in their pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The majority of these workers, according to EPI data, will be women and people of color. Right now, 59% of workers who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Latina or Black. African Americans make up 31% of the workforce that would benefit from a minimum wage increase and Latinos make up 26%, reports EPI.
CNBC
February 3, 2021
KALW San Francisco
February 3, 2021
Additionally, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, argues that a $15 federal minimum wage would decrease dependence on federal welfare programs by at least $13 billion annually.
Reason
February 3, 2021
“I am not often optimistic,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “But I am optimistic now.”
The Associated Press
February 3, 2021
Over the past decades, since the 1980s, the gap between productivity and real earnings has increased. In the 1979–2018 period, productivity has grown about six times more than wages. (Economic Policy Institute, 2019) More people today are less wealthy, less happy, and mostly underemployed or unemployed. Ownership of assets is limited to the wealthy, scantier class. In the United States, homeownership that was once common is on a decline. Other forms of non-ownership, such as rent, are much prevalent.
Medium
February 3, 2021
An Economic Policy Institute paper out today backs up Reich’s research. It creates a range of savings across three categories: government expenditures on major safety net programs, increases to FICA revenue, and reductions in spending on the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. The range falls between $27 billion and $65 billion; the top end is consistent with Reich.
The American Prospect
February 3, 2021