The Economic Policy Institute’s quip — “there is no such thing as a labor shortage, there is a wage shortage” represents that view.
Forbes
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
Indigenous farmworkers were also much more likely to work for a farm labor contractor. Farm labor contractors are the fastest-growing segment of farm employment and made up one-quarter of federal employment law violations in agriculture, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that examines the economic conditions of low and middle-income workers.
Statesman Journal
August 16, 2021
As Richard Rothstein, a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, a worker-focused think tank, argues in his history of segregation, “The Color of Law,” because Richmond was essentially all White before the war, the federal government’s role in housing directly established segregation in the city.
Undark
August 16, 2021
Corporations often scaremonger about union dues to their employees, saying that union membership is expensive and therefore not worth it. However, research shows that union members are paid 11.2 percent more than non-union workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, with greater access to benefits like health care.
Truthout
August 16, 2021
Employers spend an estimated $340 million annually for “union avoidance” consultants to discourage organized labor campaigns by improving management techniques and employee relations, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based outfit that advocates for labor.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
August 16, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute’s quip — “there is no such thing as a labor shortage, there is a wage shortage” represents that view.
Forbes
August 16, 2021
CEOs at the top 350 companies in 2020 made an average $24.2 million, a 18.9% jump, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The report also found that CEO compensation has increased an astounding 1,322% since 1978. From 1978-2020, the pay for an average worker only increased 18.0%.
Complex
August 13, 2021
However, that most frequently used unemployment figure leaves out millions of people who are jobless but not actively job-searching. According to Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the true count of the unemployed in July was over 13 million.
CBS Moneywatch
August 13, 2021
“After ticking up in June, the unemployment rate fell for the right reasons in July as more people found work rather than left the labor force,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
August 13, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “Work hours are highly unequal. Millions of people want to work more hours to earn more income while others want to work less to achieve a healthier work/life balance. A 32-hour workweek will directly help those trying to achieve greater work/life balance, while freeing up hours that can be picked up by involuntarily part-time workers. In addition to that, shorter workweeks have important environmental benefits. Reducing Americans’ average workweek is a key step towards achieving a better society.”
Banning-Beaumont Patch
August 13, 2021
Before the pandemic, American workers’ yearly average raises were around 3%. They are gradually making their way back to pre-pandemic rates, though one group was the exception and saw huge pay bumps throughout the most difficult part of the recession: CEOs’ compensation went up by 16% in 2020, compared to 1.8% for the average worker, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Money
August 13, 2021
This week’s second blockbuster report arrived Tuesday, sans the thunderclap. Few media outlets chose to give this second study — the Economic Policy Institute’s latest look at U.S. CEO pay — any high-profile real estate.
Inequality.org
August 13, 2021
A new report from researchers Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra the Economic Policy Institute has the latest disturbing news about the way our nation continues to allow a narrow class of plutocrats to make off with a vast portion of its wealth.
The report finds that, even compared to the other members of the top 0.1%, American CEO’s are making off like bandits.
The Progressive Pulse
August 13, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute recently compiled research looking at compensation packages of top executives finding that the wage gap between the typical employee and company leaders is massive. During that same time period, the report found that the average worker only saw their compensation grow by 18%.
Ladders
August 13, 2021
Janine Jackson interviewed Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper about the “we all quit” phenomenon for the August 6, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Joining us with a different angle is David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, and deputy director of EARN, the Economic Analysis and Research Network, a national network of state-level policy research and advocacy organizations. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, David Cooper.
FAIR Counterspin
August 13, 2021
Since the late 1960s, wages have made up an increasingly smaller share of the US’s gross domestic product, even as the economy grew. In the meantime, CEO pay has grown by 1,322% between 1978 and 2020, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
August 13, 2021
Some wage inflation for workers is fine, according to Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute.
“People are going out to restaurants again, and wages and employment are both rising. And until we see evidence that the fast wage growth is like choking off employment growth, I think we just have to say, ‘That’s really good. Restaurant workers actually have some bargaining power they traditionally do not have,’” Bivens said.
Marketplace
August 13, 2021
According to the National Educational Association, Kentucky ranks 42nd in the nation for starting salaries, with new teachers averaging about $37,000 per year. The overall salary for educators is a little better, at nearly $54,000 per year, but teachers are still only making 78 cents for every dollar someone with similar education and experience in a different field can make, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Salaries aren’t the only point of contention for Kentucky teachers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in Kentucky on average spend more than $400 of their own money every year to provide supplies for their students and classrooms.
WHAS 11
August 13, 2021
The use of arbitration clauses in employment agreements has increased dramatically in the last 20 years, from only 2% of workers subject to forced arbitration in 1992 compared with 56% in 2018, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute. The left-leaning think tank projects that this number will increase to 80% by 2024.
Bloomberg Law
August 13, 2021
A new report issued by the Economic Policy Institute has tracked CEO pay back to 1978 and says that the average chief executive’s pay has grown 1,322% in that time period. And while that’s certainly a long span of time — more than 40 years — the average worker’s pay has grown a mere 18 percent during that same time period.
This means the average CEO makes $351 for every dollar the average worker does… and though a recent report in Forbes says wealth increased for the ultra-wealthy to the tune of $5 trillion during the pandemic, EPI points out that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio isn’t even the highest it’s ever been. That happened in 2000, when it was 366-to-1.
Manufacturing.net
August 13, 2021
An August report from progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute found that corporate boards have awarded America’s top executives compensation packages that radically outpace stock market growth and worker pay, while the nation’s federally set hourly minimum wage has remained at $7.25 for more than a decade.
The Independent
August 13, 2021
Twenty-five other states increased their minimum wage on Jan. 1, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. The current highest rate is $15.20 an hour, in the District of Columbia, although some states have adopted annual indexing that increases their rates automatically each year.
Associated Press
August 13, 2021
These outsize compensation packages have grown faster than the stock market, and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1 per cent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with,” write authors Lawrence Mishell, a distinguished fellow, and research assistant Jori Kandra.
“CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80 per cent) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills.”
During the same period, the pay of the typical worker increased 18 per cent.
The Independent (via Yahoo! News)
August 13, 2021
Meanwhile, inflation is erasing the buying power of those new raises. I talked to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and she says if this was a big change that’s giving workers a new kind of long-term power, wage growth would be much higher. And she worries over time, wages might simply get frozen again while prices continue rising.
NPR
August 13, 2021
While housing costs doubled or tripled, wages didn’t. Compensation rose 17.2% since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Sacramento Bee
August 13, 2021
“For the first time since the late 1990s, low-wage workers have a little more leverage to demand higher pay,” said David Cooper, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive Washington think tank.
AFP (via Yahoo! News)
August 13, 2021
A new analysis released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute finds that CEO pay in the United States rose by a staggering 1,322% between 1978 and 2020—a sharp contrast to the pay increase of the typical worker, which was just 18% during that same period.
In 2020, a year of pandemic and widespread economic dislocation, the top executives at the largest public firms in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker, with CEO pay measured by salary, bonuses, long-term incentive payouts, and exercised stock options.
Common Dreams
August 13, 2021
The chief executives at major U.S. corporations received millions of dollars in bonuses or raises last year even as many companies saw slumping sales and job cuts because of the pandemic, a new analysis shows.
CEO compensation at the top 350 companies jumped nearly 19% in 2020 to an average $24.2 million, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. By comparison, pay for rank-and-file workers last year rose roughly 4%. The typical corporate leader at big companies in 2020 made $351 for every dollar earned by a typical employee, up from a ratio of 307-to-1 in 2019, according to EPI.
Economist Lawrence Mishel, who co-authored the report, said some companies touted reductions in pay for top executives to reflect the pandemic’s impact on business, but had little impact. “CEOs offering pay cuts during the pandemic yielded favorable headlines, but were symbolic at best and a head fake at worst,” he said in a statement.
CBS
August 13, 2021