While many economists blamed inflation on an overheated economy during the pandemic recovery, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s chief economist Josh Bivens asserted earlier this month that rising company profits, sometimes called “greedflation,” or “price gouging,”, explained well over 40% of the rise in prices between the end of 2019 and mid-2022. Corporate profits reached a record high in 2023.
MarketWatch
September 16, 2024
“Other welcome news include that income for lower-income households rose faster than for those at the median or at the top,” economists Elise Gould and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a commentary. “This significant increase for lower-income households led to a drop in the official poverty rate of 0.4 percentage points to 11.1% in 2023.”
The Hill
September 16, 2024
However, state preemption laws, which can make local ordinances void and could prevent many localities from implementing more worker-friendly policies, are also on the rise. There was a surge in preemption laws from 2015 to 2017 on everything from the minimum wage to paid leave, according to a June 2024 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center think tank.
States Newsroom
September 16, 2024
Remarkably (as was not the case in 2019), incomes increased more among the poorest Americans (those at the 10th percentile, by 6.7 percent) than the richest (those at the 90th percentile, by 4.6 percent). As the Economic Policy Institute points out, these gains are the result of the fiscal and recovery policies that the Biden administration and the Democratic Congress enacted in 2021-2022, which created a historically worker-friendly tight labor market.
The American Prospect
September 16, 2024
The key to reversing this trend may rest with those who are “union curious.” A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute defines the “union curious” as workers who report being interested in unions, but unsure whether they [paywall].
Corridor Business Journal
September 16, 2024
Poverty rates are higher among tipped workers and even worse for women, Black and Hispanic workers, an Economic Policy Institute brief explains. Like other sectors of the economy, race compounds these poor economic outcomes. Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Hispanic women servers earn less than other gender groups of servers.
Forbes
September 16, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute recently released a policy memo claiming that workers at all grocery workers, not just those at Kroger and Albertsons, could lose a total of over $330 million annually if the deal goes through.
The institute used grocery store employment and earnings data at specific Kroger and Albertsons stores to draw up the following findings:
Supermarket News
September 16, 2024
This pattern of superior economic performance under Democratic administrations is not limited to recent history. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank: since 1947, key macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, job growth, business investments, household income growth, etc. have consistently performed better during Democratic presidencies. A 2016 study titled “Presidents and the U.S. Economy: An Econometric Exploration”—by the 130-year-old non-profit, non-partisan American Economic Association—found that, on average, the U.S. economy has grown faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones since World War II. Specifically, the annual GDP growth rate has averaged 4.3% under Democratic presidents, compared to 2.5% under Republicans.
India Currents
September 16, 2024
“The official poverty rate ticking down tells us that the macroeconomy is strong,” Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told BI in a statement. “The fact that it is still 11.1% at near-full employment and the SPM rose tells us the U.S. system of anti-poverty programs needs strengthening. These programs keep tens of millions out of poverty, but if we expanded them, they’d bring tens of millions more out of poverty.”
Business Insider
September 16, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the final rule will benefit 4.3 million workers, 56% of whom are women and 24% of whom are workers of color.
According to the institute, the final rule will result in a transfer of $1.5 billion annually from employers to workers in increased pay. While that increase in wages will be enormously impactful to affected workers, according to the institute, it represents well under one-tenth of 1% of total wages and salaries in the U.S. economy.
The Business Journals
September 16, 2024