Media clips
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To qualify as an H-2B employer, a company must pay a wage equal to or above the industry’s prevailing wage or the area’s minimum wage. But, across all industries, H-2B workers are often paid less than U.S. workers, according to the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute.
Another requirement for a company hiring H-2B visa labor is to show a shortage of available workers. However, according to an EPI report, the U.S. economy shows no sign of labor shortages in the industries that often use H-2B visas. DOL data in the report shows about 5 million unemployed workers in occupations with H-2B approvals.
Civil Eats August 27, 2021 -
Terrorists Bombs at Kabul’s Airport Kill U.S. Marines, Afghan Civilians and Taliban Guards | Growing Pressure For Vaccine Mandates Puts Grandstanding GOP Governors in a Bind | The 100th Anniversary of America’s Largest Labor Uprising
Background Briefing with Ian Masters August 27, 2021 -
Underlying the calls for a first contract is the reality that over the last several decades, securing a first agreement has gotten more difficult for unions, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, D.C., that advocates for broader and stronger unions. Union advocates contend that management recalcitrance has made it easier for employers to stall on an initial agreement, wearing down rank-and-file support.
Wisconsin Examiner August 27, 2021 -
Even when owners choose to keep their doors open, they often deploy a range of anti-union strategies — legal and illegal — to discourage unionization attempts. According to a 2019 Economic Policy Institute study, in over 40 percent of union campaigns across industries in the United States, employers are charged with violating workers’ legal rights. In 90 percent of union campaigns, employers hold anti-union meetings and rallies intended to dissuade workers from unionizing.
In These Times August 27, 2021 -
“While the 2020 tip rule failed to include quantitative estimates of the impact of changes to the dual jobs regulations, the [nonprofit think tank] Economic Policy Institute estimates workers could lose $705 million annually,” according to the congressional Democrats’ letter.That loss of income “is significant for tipped workers, who are generally low-wage workers and experience poverty at higher rates than non-tipped workers.”
Law360 August 27, 2021 -
These proposed reforms could reap huge benefits. According to an Economic Policy Institute study, money invested in the manufacturing of durable goods (products intended for long-term use), including hydropower equipment, has one of the highest job multipliers of any industry. That means when federal projects adhere to Buy American policies and taxpayer dollars are invested in products manufactured domestically, good-paying and long-term jobs are created and sustained at home.
Philadelphia Inquirer August 27, 2021 -
Well over half of American private sector workers are now subject to mandatory arbitration, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, and consumers routinely sign binding arbitration agreements, often unknowingly, for a gamut of products and services. The process takes a range of legal disputes out of court and into a forum that’s unfamiliar, where decision makers are even less diverse than the federal bench and legal profession as a whole, and where outcomes tend to favor businesses.
Reuters August 27, 2021 -
Relying on estimates from Economic Policy Institute, a worker advocacy think tank, NELA said that establishing a 20% cap on the amount of time a worker…[pay wall]
Law360 August 27, 2021 -
“Because of the potentially higher rates of unionization in the industry, they have the opportunity to really set standards,” David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute told Motherboard. Cooper recently had the opportunity to look over multiple union contracts provided by the UFCW and found that they set wage floors that are well above state minimum wages among other competitive benefits.
The New York legislation also sets a goal of providing 50 percent of business licenses to people disproportionately affected by the criminalization of marijuana. “I think it’s all well and good to write legislation that provides the support for entrepreneurship for folks who are formerly incarcerated. But the reality is the vast majority of people who are going to work in a legal cannabis industry are not going to be business owners, they’re going to be rank and file employees,” Cooper said. “We need to have structures and standards in place that make sure that those folks can make a decent living in the industry.”
VICE August 27, 2021 -
Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She’s the co-author of “Rescuing Retirement” and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg (via Washington Post) August 27, 2021 -
In an analysis of national public school teacher data, the Economic Policy Institute found that most teachers are not highly satisfied with their professional development experiences.92 The study found that only 50 percent of teachers have release time from teaching for professional development, and only 28 percent received reimbursement for conference and workshop fees.93 Furthermore, a TNTP survey of teachers and school leaders found that teachers feel they are not getting clear information about their strengths and weaknesses to improve their instruction.94 Half of the teachers surveyed did not think the assistance they were receiving helped them improve their practice.95 These surveys illustrate that teachers want quality professional development experiences and need support to engage in learning that improves their practice.
Center for American Progress August 27, 2021 -
“I don’t think of the last few months as either vindication or repudiation, yet,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute and a longtime enthusiast of policymakers seeking a high-pressure economy.
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Still, “I think the benefits of carrying on the go-for-growth strategy will come,” Mr. Bivens said, noting exceptionally strong job creation in recent months.
New York Times August 27, 2021 -
August 27, 2021
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A report from the Economic Policy Institute cites a median hourly wage for child care workers of $10.31 an hour.
Cronkite News August 27, 2021 -
Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, argues there isn’t a labor shortage outside of the hospitality and leisure industries. The classic sign — rising wages — is confined to that sector and, even with a boost in pay, leisure and hospitality have only risen to their pre-pandemic levels, she says. In a survey by One Fair Wage, more than half of respondents say they considered leaving their restaurant jobs due to low wages and tips.
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The Economic Policy Institute’s Shierholz says there won’t be any real realignment of the economy without massive policy changes, including raising the minimum wage and rate of unionization.
“There’s a ton of evidence that employers of low- and middle-wage workers have had the power to suppress workers’ wages, and that dynamic has been growing for decades,” she says. “We can pay our lowest paid workers more. Instead, the minimum wage is 30 percent less than it was in 1968.”
Rhode Island Monthly August 27, 2021 -
USTR works closely with the Labor Department, which in turn is in close contact with American and Mexican unions to identify abuses. The Labor Department’s top liaison with USTR is the deputy undersecretary for international affairs, Thea Lee.
Prospect readers may recognize the name. Thea Lee was president of the Economic Policy Institute, and for 20 years before that was a senior staffer at the AFL-CIO.
American Prospect August 20, 2021 -
The declining bargaining power of unions contributes to the crisis of extreme income inequality in the United States. “The erosion of collective bargaining is the second largest factor that suppressed wage growth and fueled wage inequality over the last four decades,” finds the Economic Policy Institute. Belonging to a union significantly boosts wages: Unionized workers earn, on average, over 11% more than their nonunionized counterparts and are more likely to have health benefits from their employer. Unionized workers also are less likely to get laid off than their nonunion workers.
Capital and Main August 20, 2021 -
CEOs at the largest publicly traded companies earned, on average, 351 times as much as the typical worker in their industry, according to a new analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s the largest gap since the stock market bubble peaked in 2000.
Those executives also got a handsome pay raise: 18.9% on average. Meanwhile, the typical worker (who didn’t get laid off) saw only a 3.9% increase in wages.
The pay gap between top executives and their employees has been widening since the 1980s, when CEOs made about 45 times as much as the median worker.
“The escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes, generating widespread inequality,” wrote economists Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra, who authored the study.
Center for Public Integrity August 20, 2021 -
There are an estimated 9.5 million Americans who are unemployed, but the Economic Policy Institute determined that there are another 10.4 million workers who continue to be financially hurt by the unemployment downturn as of June.
The Sun August 20, 2021 -
In 2020, COVID-19 put a huge dent in household incomes, with millions of people losing their jobs. Unemployment hit low-wage workers the hardest, with 80% of job losses in 2020 coming from workers in the bottom 25% of wage distribution, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Low-wage workers who had a lower tax liability before the pandemic hit may have seen their federal income tax bill completely wiped out when their income dropped.
Money August 20, 2021 -
That’s been an ongoing issue with minimal resolution in sight, said Ron Hira, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute. He said while the report is “vital and consistent” with his longtime research, it just scratches the surface of the issues involving temporary and contracted workers in tech.
“This report is important because it sheds light on the actual employment situation for most technology workers, which is much worse than what most people, including reporters and policymakers, believe to be the case,” Hira said. “There’s a large gap between what people’s impression of the technology labor market versus its true state.”
Hira also disputed the misperception that there’s a shortage of technology workers, and as a result, those workers have their pick of jobs, can demand high wages and luxurious working conditions.
“The (tech) companies themselves have played an aggressive role in creating the false version of the technology labor market,” Hira said. “It is so difficult to break through with the truth because the misperception of widespread labor shortages has become a truism for most people.”
USA Today August 20, 2021 -
Last year, while the US was in a pandemic recession and millions of people were out of work, CEOs of the country’s biggest public companies saw their compensation increase $24 million on average. How did that happen? It’s all about the stock market. That’s Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow and former president of the Economic Policy Institute.
BYU Radio August 20, 2021 -
Un análisis del Economic Policy Institute (Instituto de Política Económica) ratifica la tesis de Xiuhtecutli al destacar que los trabajadores agrícolas, considerados “esenciales” en medio de la pandemia para sostener las cadenas de suministro de alimentos, “no han sido recompensados adecuadamente” pues ganaban 14,62 dólares por hora en promedio en 2020, mucho menos que algunos de los “peor pagados” del país.
The San Diego Union-Tribune August 20, 2021 -
Harris spent years at the Labor Department before rising to deputy labor secretary in 2009. His work carrying out the Obama administration’s policies on workplace safety, wage theft and other labor issues drew plenty of praise from the left. The Economic Policy Institute wrote regarding Harris’s breadth of experience that it was “unlikely that anyone so knowledgeable will ever serve” at the agency again.
Huffpost August 20, 2021 -
In the mid-twentieth century, one in three US workers were union members. By 2020, it was down to about one in ten. US employers spend almost $340 million (US) every year hiring “union avoidance advisers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
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And, according to the Economic Policy Institute, strong unions set industry standards for wages and benefits that help all workers, often by pushing non-union employers to raise wages to stay competitive. Union effects also extend beyond the labour market. One US study found health care facilities with registered-nurses unions have better patient outcomes.
The Walrus August 20, 2021 -
For the first time in years, talk of inflation fears has taken center stage in mainstream economic discourse. Inflation, an economic measure for increased prices in goods and services, accelerated noticeably in recent months, climbing 5.4 percent in July over the previous year. This spurred calls for the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, to “cool off” the economy by raising interest rates. But doing so could cause a lot of collateral damage by stalling the still-nascent economic recovery.
“Cooling off” the economy sounds prudent, innocuous even. Yet, in practice, this monetary policy maneuver means that the Fed increases borrowing costs for businesses and pulls back on helping jobless Americans find work. So it’s worth breaking down this year’s inflation data in granular detail, then asking whether the price increases we’ve seen merit the very tough medicine — slower growth and higher unemployment — that would result from the stricter monetary policy that some financial commentators now recommend.
The ultimate answer most likely depends on how lasting this inflation acceleration will be, which, in turn, depends on how widespread the price growth American consumers have experienced becomes.
So far, the inflationary burst of 2021 has been overwhelmingly driven by a narrow group of sectors that were deeply affected by the shock of Covid-19 and last year’s accompanying shutdowns. In July, some of these sectors (used cars in particular) experienced a big deceleration in inflation, bolstering the argument — led by the Fed chair, Jerome Powell — that the inflationary surge might be “transitory,” or fade quickly on its own.
That would be good news for the economy and job-seekers: If inflation proves to be transitory then it’s likely that the Fed doesn’t need to reel back as much of its economic support out of fears of “overheating” the economy and sparking long-lasting inflation.
New York Times August 20, 2021 -
The decision was “seemingly rooted in simple-minded partisanship that demanded a Republican president replace a Democratic appointee as Fed chair,” Josh Bivens, research director at the typically liberal Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a statement at the time. “This decision breaks a longstanding norm of not elevating partisanship over competence when picking Fed chairs.”
Mr. Bivens, in an email last week, said that the norm “is pretty broken,” but that the decision to replace a Fed chair should still come down to whether the incumbent had done a good job. There’s a strong case for keeping Mr. Powell based on his monetary policymaking at a moment of fierce debate over the Fed’s policy direction, he thinks.
New York Times August 20, 2021 -
Data released by the economic policy institute clearly shows that since 1971, the United States’ net productivity growth stopped causing hourly wages to grow as well.
Up until that point, the lines representing the two metrics followed each other so closely that they nearly perfectly overlap.
After the dollar was detached from the gold standard, productivity more than doubled, but it didn’t reflect on wages.
Benzinga (via Yahoo! Finance) August 20, 2021 -
Besides Policy Matters, those filing the brief include the American Sustainable Business Council, the leading business organization serving the public policy interests of responsible companies; the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit law and research organization that has advocated for the employment rights of unemployed workers for over 50 years; Professor William E. Spriggs of Howard University, a leading expert on U.S. social insurance programs and the implications for racial equity; the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization with over 30 years’ experience analyzing the effects of economic policy on the lives of America’s working families, and Andrew Stettner of the Century Foundation, an expert in policy research on U.S. social insurance programs.
Policy Matters Ohio August 20, 2021 -
After a lot of ups and downs, the Senate finally passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) last week. According to Moody’s Analytics, the bill could create roughly 650,000 jobs. Many of these would be good-paying jobs, with excellent wages and benefits, especially for non-college-educated workers in manufacturing and construction.
We at the Economic Policy Institute agree with this assessment — and believe these new jobs will pay substantially more than positions in service industries, especially for women as well as Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color.
These jobs are urgently needed. Wage inequality in the United States has been growing since the late 1970s, and there’s a critical need to create new middle-class employment. In particular, failed international economic policies — including those which led to growing trade deficits that displaced more than 5 million manufacturing jobs since 1998 — can explain a significant share of growing wage inequality. As a result, millions of Americans who have lost productive jobs have simply been forced into lower-paying service industry positions.
The Hill August 20, 2021