School districts across the country have been struggling with a bus driver shortage for years. As of last September there were about 12% fewer school bus drivers on the road than in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The nonprofit cited low pay as a key factor.
WXII News
August 13, 2025
Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of state policy and research for the Economic Policy Institute and the report’s co-author, pointed to a new Colorado law expanding the state’s authority to penalize employers who steal wages from their workers and to make those violations public. She said it is important for states to crack down on these sorts of abuses.
Public News Service
August 13, 2025
Heidi Shierholz, who served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonpartisan labor think tank the Economic Policy Institute, joins us to talk about the BLS, the important data it compiles, and what the hell a revision is.
Crooked Media What A Day Podcast
August 13, 2025
Trump also fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August, the agency responsible for economic statistics, which was already weakened after years of tight budgets and staff shortages. That’s on top of a budget that “will gut Medicaid, slash food aid for families, and shutter rural hospitals,” says Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz — all in the name of handouts in the form of tax cuts for the superrich, increasing the national debt by trillions over the next decade while eliminating nearly 6 million jobs by trying to enact the mass deportation of one million people.
In These Times
August 13, 2025
As of September 2024, there were 12.2% fewer school bus drivers in the U.S. than in September 2019, according to Economic Policy Institute.
Shreveport Times
August 13, 2025
Valerie Wilson, a labor economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the modest rise in long-term joblessness could reflect employers getting pickier about hiring as President Donald Trump’s tariff regime changes the cost of doing business.
“People who have been unemployed for longer have clearly had some challenges in getting back into the labor market,” Wilson told HuffPost. “I think that as things have softened, and employers are facing more uncertainty given the sort of chaotic nature of economic policy in this country, that it would be harder for those people to find new jobs.”
Huffpost
August 13, 2025
The 2025 data shows virtually every metric has worsened, often with double-digit increases. This comes despite the fact that teachers earn just 73 cents for every dollar made by similarly educated professionals, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Teachers nationwide now expect to spend 12% more on classroom supplies compared to last year. The financial burden isn’t just growing; it’s accelerating at a pace that far outstrips both inflation and wage growth.
Courier Texas
August 13, 2025
“Employers are holding steady with the workers they have, and workers are also holding steady in their roles. That can make it harder for new labor market entrants to come in,” Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said, adding that “it could be tougher for men who are looking for jobs where there’s just not a whole lot of hiring right now.”
Business Insider
August 13, 2025
The president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), Heidi Shierholz, said that Trump’s actions were “a move straight out of an autocratic playbook.”
“To fire her over an official data release — simply because the numbers do not serve a particular political narrative — is a deeply dangerous attack on the foundations of a functioning democracy,” she said in a statement.
Truthout
August 13, 2025
“Removing millions of workers overnight isn’t just bad immigration policy, it’s economic suicide,” said Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.
South Florida Media
August 13, 2025