New Jersey is particularly pricey for child care. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual cost of infant care in the state is $12,988.
NJ.com
January 4, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a scholar at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama, told The Hill, “Reasonable time’ is not defined, and its ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, providing employers an immense loophole and leaving workers behind.” She predicted the change could cost tipped workers a collective $700 million a year, and shift more jobs from non-tipped to tipped.
FSR Magazine
January 4, 2021
39. Black women, on average, earn 64 cents for every dollar a white man earns, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
New York Times
January 4, 2021
The disparities run even deeper: Research shows that Black workers’ benefits are less likely to include paid sick days and the ability to work from home, and according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, access to paid sick days is “vastly unequal.” And that’s just about sick days.
NBC News
January 4, 2021
People who live in states that did not expand Medicaid, including Florida, Georgia, and other southern states, are less likely to have affordable care, says Reinert. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the pandemic has widened this access gap: As many as 12 million Americans lost employer-sponsored health insurance between February and August.
National Geographic
January 4, 2021
Workers’ needs are greater during an economic downturn because, with so many people jobless, they have little bargaining power and employers are able to keep wages low, said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
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For the 20 states that will raise their minimum wages, the effects ultimately should be more positive than negative, the EPI’s Zipperer said.
“Redistributing money towards the lowest paid workers is smart policy, because they will spend it,” he said. “This will help the shortfall in consumer demand our economy faces right now.”
CNN Business
January 4, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute nonprofit, says this could lead to big savings for restaurants, as servers are typically paid much less than workers who usually do those nontipped tasks—but tipped workers could lose out on up to $700 million a year due to this rule change, per EPI estimates last year. “You don’t solve the low wages of the lowest paid workers by taking it out of the wages of the second-lowest paid workers,” Shierholz tells CBS. “You pay them more.”
Newser
January 4, 2021
“All these folks and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said in a tweet.
The Guardian
January 4, 2021
“All these folks and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, tweeted Wednesday.
Associated Press
January 4, 2021
One example of this systematic inequality is the ratio of CEO to worker pay. According to the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute as of 2019, CEO’s now make 320 times more than their average workers make, up from around a 50:1 in the 1970s — and the pandemic has only worsened this inequality. Are CEOs really that much more valuable than those who are putting in the actual blood, sweat, and tears?
The Gazette
January 4, 2021