Specific data on how much money bosses steal from employees in Washington is thin on the ground, but a 2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute looked at minimum wage theft alone in the top 10 most populous states in the country and found that companies steal an average of “$3,300 per year for year-round workers” in those states, amounting to a loss of “nearly a quarter of their earned wages.”
The Stranger
January 29, 2021
Specifically, the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 would increase the federal minimum wage over a four-year period from $7.25 to $15. It would also index future increases in the federal minimum wage to median wage growth in addition to phasing out the subminimum wage for tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities. According to an independent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, the Raise the Wage Act of 2021 would increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including roughly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers.
Sen. Mark Warner
January 29, 2021
In 2017 the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) looked at 2.4 million US workers. Based on their analysis, they reported wage theft as an $8 billion a year industry. Factor in the rest of the population the theft comes in closer to $15 billion, stolen by employers every year ($64/paycheque). It’s a lucrative and easy line of income for the bosses. Even though it’s against the law — it’s the type of law you can break without any consequences. It’s rarely prosecuted and if it does go to court, which happens, the thief gets to keep some of their stolen loot.
Medium
January 29, 2021
Read the Economic Policy Institute’s fact sheet on why we need $15 here.
SEIU
January 29, 2021
1 – Zipperer, Ben, and Josh Bivens. “9.2 Million Workers Likely Lost Their Employer-Provided Health Insurance in the Past Four Weeks.” Economic Policy Institute, 16 Apr. 2020
PR Newswire
January 28, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, an increase in the federal minimum wage will result in a pay increase for “38.1 percent of all black workers and 23.2 percent of all white workers.” Black workers are also less likely to live in areas where the state minimum wage is higher than the federal minimum wage.
News One
January 28, 2021
Beginning in 2026, the federal minimum wage would be indexed to median wage growth. According to an independent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, the Raise the Wage Act would increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including roughly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers.
Atlanta Daily World
January 28, 2021
Thea Lee, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute put it this way: “This is not a normal recession. We are definitely in uncharted territory due to the nature of this recession.” She emphasized the especially deep losses that low-income workers, Black and Hispanic workers, and women have faced this time around.
Washington Post
January 28, 2021
A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out that the official number of unemployed is miscounted in the best of years, made far worse in the age of COVID-19. The methodology itself is skewed. Issues such as overlooking individuals more likely to be unemployed than those included in final calculations lead to an official unemployment rate that was off by 1.5 percentage points at the beginning of 2020. That means 2.7 million unemployed people were “misclassified as not in the labor force” even before the pandemic hit. And that’s a conservative estimate. The wonky nature of that skewed methodology that produces skewed numbers means that it’s hard to get a real number and therefore a real handle on how bad things really are. And this is no accident. As Professor Wolff put it, “There is literally no aspect of this subject that isn’t loaded with people’s ideological agendas. It’s built into the numbers. It’s built into the way that those numbers are interpreted. Both the numbers and their interpretation are highly contestable.”
Mint Press News
January 28, 2021
According to an analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, the Act would increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including nearly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers, and more than half of the people who would benefit are women.
Business Insider
January 28, 2021