This infographic ranks U.S. states by the share of low-wage workers earning less than $20 per hour, using data from the Economic Policy Institute as of July 2025.
Visual Capitalist
December 15, 2025
About 370,000 migrant workers are currently in the U.S. through the H-2A program for agriculture—roughly 17% of the agricultural workforce. The program is projected to grow to around 900,000 workers in 2034, accounting for 42% of agricultural jobs, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank. The H-2B program—for landscaping, hospitality, construction, seafood processing, forestry, recreation, and, increasingly, poultry and meat processing—has a formal cap of 66,000 workers, although 170,000 worked in the U.S. in 2024. This program will have an estimated 252,000 visas in 2026, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at EPI.
Prism Reports
December 15, 2025
“Because the costs have been rising so much for so many families, we know the cost of child care, the cost of health care, the need to be able to earn more money just to keep up, necessitated more hours per family,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
CNBC
December 15, 2025
A new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute claims that the signature trade deal from President Donald Trump’s first term has actually “created more problems than it fixed.”
The report, published Thursday, notes that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), signed into law by Trump in 2020, has completely failed to fulfill Trump’s stated goal of lowering the US trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, which has grown from a combined $125 billion in 2020 to $263 billion in 2025.
Common Dreams
December 15, 2025
Even that number is questionable because it includes pledges and plans for investment that may not be realized, experts have said, as we reported in May.
“There’s no guarantee that any of the investments that are announced actually come to fruition,” Adam Hersh, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said. Economists “wouldn’t count them until they’re actually in the ground,” Hersh said about the listed projects.
FactCheck.org
December 15, 2025
And the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said the housing deduction will “harm U.S. farmworkers, not help them.”
Previous H-2A rules “required employers to offer no-cost housing to U.S. farmworkers if they were in corresponding employment with H-2A workers; thus, they were entitled to the same benefit if they needed housing,” EPI said.
“But the massive reduction in wages that H-2A workers will see from the housing deduction will greatly reduce labor costs for employers who hire H-2A workers as compared to U.S. farmworkers — undercutting U.S. wages and incentivizing employers to hire H-2A workers and bypass U.S. farmworkers — which will unquestionably ‘adversely affect’ the wages and working conditions of U.S. farmworkers.”
AgriPulse
December 15, 2025
From 2020 to 2024, data from NAHB shows existing home prices increased by over 37%, spurred by the post-pandemic real estate buying frenzy. The year-over-year wage growth for private employees is just 3.9%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Homes.com
December 15, 2025
However, some economists disagree, and some studies have shown that these effects are generally small and localized. A blog post written by Economist Josh Bivens for the Economic Policy Institute and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research has found that modest minimum-wage increases only raise prices marginally. Many businesses absorb wage increases through productivity improvements, slower hiring, or reduced turnover, rather than significant price hikes
Southeast Arrow (Missouri)
December 15, 2025
During Wednesday’s briefing, Adam Keller, Arise’s Worker Power Campaign director, highlighted several figures published by the Economic Policy Institute, EPI, showcasing the crucial role which unions play in expanding worker power. One such figure paints a directly inverse correlation between union membership and the percentage of income going to the top 10 percent. Keller explained that as American union membership has declined over the past several decades, the working class has lost more and more of its income as the wealthy have grown wealthier and wealthier.
Alabama Reporter
December 15, 2025