Minimum wage was established in 1938 in the throes of economic depression; morale was low and poverty was high. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to stimulate the economy by increasing purchasing power. Over time, wages have gradually increased every few years. In 1956, wages reached $1.00 an hour ($9.55 today). By 1968, wages reached $1.60 ($11.65 today). But after 1968, wages dropped away from productivity, while inflation increased. Though wages continued increasing, they did not keep pace with inflation, leaving the government playing catch up on mistakes of the 1970s and 1980s. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that if wages kept pace with productivity, minimum wage could be approaching or above $20 today.
We have seen thousands of front-line workers risk their lives during the global pandemic. Not just health care workers, but grocery store employees, fast food drive-thru operators and Amazon factory workers. These front-line jobs are disproportionately held by minority and female workers. Women and minorities are historically overrepresented in low-wage jobs and less likely to work and live in areas where the minimum wage is above the federal level. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that increasing the minimum wage to $15 would give 38% of Black and 33% of Hispanic workers a raise. Nearly 60% of the typical workers who would benefit are women.
The Philadelphia Tribune
August 14, 2020
Last year in San Mateo, Calif., a history teacher at Hillsdale High School conducted a mock hearing of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Sophia Heath, then a freshman, played an anti-apartheid lawyer. She recalls that she “was really excited and that was the beginning of where my activism started.” On the web, she found Coalition Z, a youth group that registers voters and presses officials to combat climate change, provide more equitable school funding and enact gun control. Ms. Heath started a local chapter.
The New York Times
August 14, 2020
Black households have less in the bank in the case of, say, an economy-tanking global pandemic. In general, they have about fives times less in liquid assets — checking and savings accounts, cash and directly held stocks, bonds and mutual funds — than White households: About $8,800 compared to $49,500, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
August 14, 2020
In March, as the virus continued to spread around the world, the State Department announced that it would suspend visa processing, effectively shutting off the flow of seasonal agricultural workers coming from Mexico. Industry groups and Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, pushed back with such urgency that the decision was quickly reversed; the State Department announced that the H-2A program would be continued as “a national security priority.” It’s meaningful, said Daniel Costa, a lawyer and immigration expert at the Economic Policy Institute, that the H-2A system is one of the only parts of the immigration system that hasn’t shut down because of the pandemic: “The government has moved heaven and earth to make sure companies can keep employing these workers.” Even though the visas were reopened, said Kristin Kershaw Snapp, the director of corporate affairs for Domex Superfresh Growers, another major Washington fruit company, the threat that they might not be was enough to realize how precariously the system was propped up. “That was a very scary 12 hours,” she said.
The New York Times
August 14, 2020
As the Economic Policy Institute indicated through its own research, not only do Black women experience disparities in all these fields, but they experience them at every socioeconomic level. For instance, Black female doctors are paid 73 percent of the average hourly wage of non-Hispanic white male doctors—a $16.82 hourly shortfall. Meanwhile, Black women who work as waitstaff are paid 89 percent less, comprising a difference of $1.13 per hour. And the inequalities persist, even when Black women comprise the majority of the respective workforce in that field.
The Root
August 14, 2020
Economic Policy Institute Economist Monique Morrissey joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to discuss the concerns over cost-cutting at USPS.
Yahoo Finance
August 14, 2020
And these awful projections might be best-case assessments. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows the spending generated by that extra $600 is supporting 5 million jobs. If the dollars disappear, so will the jobs they support.
Fortune
August 14, 2020
But Julia Wolfe, state economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post Thursday that the Labor Department’s report downplays the number of workers who filed for unemployment benefits last week. The actual figure, according to Wolfe, is 1.3 million.
“Astonishingly high numbers of workers continue to claim UI, and we are still 12.9 million jobs short of February employment levels,” Wolfe wrote. “And yet, Senate Republicans allowed the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly UI benefits—the most effective economic policy crisis response so far—to expire.”
Common Dreams
August 14, 2020