The Economic Policy Institute (a left-leaning think tank) estimates that from 1979 to 2024, net productivity grew roughly 80% while median hourly compensation grew only about 30%.
John Dickerson Substack
February 25, 2026
01:13:10 – Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz previews Trump’s SOTU
Bloomberg TV
February 25, 2026
“Trump policies will hamstring the economy’s ability to supply goods and services, and these policies aim to increase inequality by transferring income from the bottom and middle toward the top,” according to a new report by Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. This shift will happen through funding cuts for public services, including Affordable Care Act subsidies, and tax cuts favoring the rich, he wrote.
“Sometimes this affordability crunch will manifest as higher prices or faster inflation, but it is more likely to appear as slower wage growth and the rollback of public supports for households,” Bivens wrote.
MarketWatch
February 25, 2026
But Trump didn’t talk about the root cause of these affordability problems: the long-running rise in inequality. And he didn’t call for the single most-effective way to reverse this inequality: raising taxes significantly on the ultra-rich families and corporations. In a new Economic Policy Institute report, I highlight how we got here and offer meaningful solutions to tackle growing inequality through wealth taxation.
The link between inequality and affordability is clear: Affordability improves when incomes (mostly wages and public benefits for typical families) grow faster than prices. Rising inequality means that the economy’s average growth rate is buoyed by stratospheric growth at the top and hence no longer maps onto what is available to typical families to help them afford a secure and decent life.
In These Times
February 25, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute also reported in November that national school bus driver employment remains 9.5% below 2019 staffing numbers.
Grand Forks Herald (Minnesota)
February 23, 2026
- In an article in the Economic Policy Institute, Adewale A. Maye, Daniel Perez, and Margaret Poydock at the institution explain that independent contractor status strips workers of minimum wage and overtime protections under the FLSA, and collective bargaining rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Maye and several coauthors estimate that misclassified construction workers lose up to $19,526 annually, while truck drivers lose as much as $21,532 in wages and benefits. To curb these losses, the Maye team urges policymakers to adopt a strong, uniform legal test for employee status and to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would make it harder for employers to misclassify workers to prevent unionization.
The Regulatory Review
February 23, 2026
At the same time, the Trump administration has weakened oversight of the conditions and health services at detention centers. It cut staff at the DHS Immigration Detention Ombudsman office, effectively shuttering most of its operations, according to a KFF analysis and the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on economic research.
CNN.com
February 23, 2026
Most clicked story of the week
The employment rate of Black women fell by 1.4 percentage points to 55.7% in 2025, marking one of the sharpest one-year declines in the last 25 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. The months to come may make it clear whether the decline was “an early indication of more widespread job losses to come” or possibly “casualties of anti-equity backlash in action,” EPI said.
HR Dive
February 23, 2026
White-collar office drones and blue collar stiffs alike are both suffering through one of the harshest layoff periods since 2009. Recent polling, meanwhile, found that 71 percent of Americans fear AI will put “too many people out of work permanently.” And according to the Economic Policy Institute, more than more than 50 million American workers across all industries wanted union representation in 2025, but couldn’t get it.
Futurism
February 23, 2026