A new report by the Economic Policy Institute offers a dramatic, state-by-state look at efforts by state legislatures to preempt local ordinances and laws, from a higher minimum wage to paid leave policies, aimed at bettering the lives of their citizens — especially during the pandemic.
“Southern states are more likely than states in other regions to use preemption to stop local governments from setting strong labor standards that would support people struggling to make ends meet, such as raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing paid sick leave,” the report’s authors conclude.
They attribute this prevalence to a “long history of events and actions that have reinforced anti-Black racism and white supremacy toward preemption to the region’s long history of adopting policies that have.”
Pennsylvania Capital-Star
October 6, 2020
State government education and local government education lost 49,000 jobs and 134,000 jobs, respectively. Those losses reflect layoffs at public universities on the state level and layoffs at elementary, middle and high schools on the local level.
“There were large losses in the public sector in September, not only because of the decrease of temporary Census workers, but more acutely because of the losses in local K-12 education,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Education employment was already suffering prior to the current economy crises. School systems need more, not fewer, resources in these challenging times.”
CNBC
October 6, 2020
CRONIN: That’s Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. My first question for Heidi – is there, like, some kind of worker shortage happening?
SHIERHOLZ: The answer to that is just an absolute no. Right now, there are quite literally more than 8 million more unemployed people than job openings. So there’s an absolute excess of workers who need jobs – over and above job openings that are posted.
NPR Planet Money
October 6, 2020
Michael you know I read Heidi Shierholz over at the Economic Policy Institute they got a lefty feel, all the conservatives read it as well, but they do great great labor work. 29 million to 33 million workers in someway affected how will they be counted tomorrow in the jobs report well will come a lot less at least if history is any guide, the labor Department numbers for the unemployment insurance program that she may be referring to are much much higher than the number of unemployed counted by the bureau of labor statistics in the monthly reports.
Bloomberg Radio
October 2, 2020
Researchers from the Economic Policy Institute report that executive pay grew by more than 1,000 percent from 1978 to 2018—nearly 100 times the 11.9 percent growth for average workers—and serious conflicts of interest are embedded in addressing the pay gap within businesses (not to speak of income inequality more broadly). But for most businesses, addressing climate risk appears less plagued by conflicts of interest of this sort. Environmental responsibility and risk management could grow faster relieved of the burden of the conflicts of interests attached to other ESG concerns.
Stanford Social Innovation Review
October 2, 2020
n top executive ranks, 85% of positions are held by whites, per a CNBC report, while the Economic Policy Institute found that women and minorities continue to earn less than their male colleagues.
Forbes
October 2, 2020
Hero MotoCorp’s CEO earns 752 times more than the median salary at the Indian motorcycle manufacturer. That was the largest of the CEO pay gaps found by a pair of economists studying pay at 40 listed companies in India. For comparison, in the US, the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2019 was 320-1, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Quartz
October 2, 2020
Ironically, the most common retirement savings account, the 401(k) plan, is not delivering adequate savings, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Americans ages 56 to 61 had a median 401(k) balance of just $21,000 in 2016, the institute found, using Survey of Consumer Finance data.
CNBC
October 2, 2020
Though redlining is no longer government policy, its consequences are still with us. According to the Economic Policy Institute, just 13 percent of white students attend a school that has a majority of Black students, while nearly 70 percent of Black students do. Black wealth trails badly behind white wealth; the former is more likely to live in an area with lower home values and, because of disparities in income, many Black Americans have not been able to build up enough wealth to buy a home in the first place.
VOX
October 2, 2020