A dead end at the federal level gives employers a nearly bottomless source of delays to union efforts, said Margaret Poydock, senior policy analyst with the Economic Policy Institute. To that end, employers including SpaceX and Amazon have begun filing petitions with the National Labor Relations Board arguing that the agency itself is unconstitutional. Others have argued that, without quorum at the federal level, regional NLRB offices cannot schedule elections. Every new filing increases the likelihood of a delay.
“Delays at the NLRB can disrupt the momentum of union organizing campaigns and workers’ ability to hold their employers accountable for violating labor law,” said Poydock. Trump’s firing of Wilcox “created the expectation that future board members are expected to side with employers over workers,” she said.
Capital & Main
July 21, 2025
Investopedia
July 21, 2025
According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, workers lose over $15 billion each year due to minimum wage violations alone — a burden that disproportionately affects immigrant and undocumented workers.
MoneyWise
July 21, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Trump’s deportations will take 22,000 migrants out of the workforce. Approximately 10,000 losses are expected in manufacturing. The child care sector could lose 15.1% of its workforce nationwide.
The Gazette Cedar Rapids (Iowa)
July 21, 2025
Since 2023, 28 states have introduced bills to roll back child labor protections, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and 12 states have enacted them.
Truthout
July 21, 2025
President Donald Trump’s deportation quotas, which are rounding up plenty of folks who have no criminal record and are abiding by regular immigration court hearings in order to become legal citizens, are estimated to eventually cost the US around 6 million jobs, per a new Economic Policy Institute study. Around 2.6 million of those jobs will be jobs held by US-born workers. Half of the losses will be in construction and childcare, but agriculture will suffer too.
Iowa Starting Line
July 21, 2025
“Young people are obviously not one monolithic group. Some are going to college, some started college and didn’t finish,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told BI, adding, “But I don’t think people always understand that this is what happens, the sort of ‘first hired, first fired’ phenomenon.”
Business Insider
July 21, 2025
A new report from economists at the Economic Policy Institute, however, finds the opposite to be true and that the net impact of mass deportation on employment – both for immigrants and U.S. born workers – is decidedly negative.
Indeed, the administration’s goal of deporting one-million people per year will lead to a loss of nearly six million jobs over the coming years – more than forty percent of them held by U.S. born workers.
NC Newsline
July 21, 2025
Ron Hira, associate professor of political science at Howard University and a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which advocates for progressive labor policy, told The Register that the concerns Lynn has raised are valid, though a narrow framing of a complex issue.
“There’s no doubt that the H-1B and OPT work program – and the OPT is not supposed to be a work program, but it really is – have really nothing to do with merit or competence or any kind of labor shortages,” Hira said.
“So those are fundamental flaws in the program. And then, on top of that, both of those programs allow employers to pay a lot less than market wages. So there’s no doubt that those programs distort the US labor market in very negative ways for workers who are in that market.”
The Register
July 21, 2025
Sources
Economic Policy Institute, How vouchers harm public schools, December 19, 2024
Politifact
July 21, 2025