Combining this strategy with cost-of-living data from the Economic Policy Institute, they report that a single adult with no children in the nation needs to make $106,745 in pretaxed income to live comfortably in America.
The Oklahoman
November 24, 2025
Critics slammed the change as a way to target immigrants as part of Trump’s broader policies.
“It’s a terrible and unfair idea to deny tax credits to people who have paid taxes and are eligible for them because of their immigration status,” said Daniel Costa, director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
November 24, 2025
But tapping Americans who have left the labor force due to illness or incarceration is a high-risk strategy that is unlikely to succeed, many economists said. Skills atrophy after people leave the labor force. Many who do often have substance abuse problems or other issues that make them a poor fit for work alongside high-powered machinery.
“It’s totally unrealistic,” said Adam Hersh, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank.
The Washington Post
November 24, 2025
Economists had traditionally disliked minimum wages on the basis of simple supply and demand: compulsory high pay destroys jobs and pushes workers to the informal sector. In 1994 the OECD cautioned against the policy, favouring “direct” redistribution. But the same year landmark research by David Card and Alan Krueger, two American economists, was published, finding that a minimum-wage increase in New Jersey had not affected fast-food employment compared with neighbouring Pennsylvania. Others devised similar studies. Most found that minimum wages reduced employment, but only by a little.
That “little” got smaller and smaller over time—as a database of research maintained by Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank, demonstrates. In the early 2000s the literature indicated that a 1% increase in wages caused by a higher minimum wage would lead to a 0.5% decline in employment. By the late 2010s the effect had fallen to around zero.
The Economist
November 24, 2025
The study analyzed which metros were the most affordable by using data from the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator to determine the cost of living in U.S. cities. Researchers at Upgraded Points then used the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey to determine median wages.
San Antonio Current
November 24, 2025
That’s a mistake on numerous levels. Progressives, especially in periods of rising inequality, have long argued that workers’ paychecks should grow closer to the rate of productivity, which is a fancy way of saying that the bakers, not just the bakery owners, ought to get a fair slice of the pie they’re baking. But, of course, as the Economic Policy Institute has long shown, that’s not always been the case (though contrary to claims that inequality only goes up, there are periods, often during full employment labor markets, wherein median compensation growth kept pace with productivity).
The National Memo
November 24, 2025
“That means policymakers (including the Federal Reserve) will be flying partially blind for several more weeks — very bad timing because the economy is so uncertain right now,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a text message.
The Washington Post
November 24, 2025
A 2015 analysis published by the Economic Policy Institute described how 250 Disney workers “were forced to train” their foreign replacements and that thousands more across utilities, energy companies, and manufacturers faced the same outcome.
Dallas Express
November 24, 2025
This analysis draws on data from the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator and the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates. The EPI tool estimates the annual cost of living in U.S. cities, accounting for expenses such as housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes, and other necessities.
WJLA
November 24, 2025
Investopedia
November 24, 2025