At its peak in 1968, “federal minimum wage was equal to about half of a typical middle-class worker’s wage,” says David Cooper, senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute. “Today, it equals about 30 percent of a typical middle-class worker’s wage. When someone earns federal minimum wage today, they are much further from the middle class than their counterparts a generation ago.”
Parade Magazine
July 13, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank, on Friday called on lawmakers to extend the $600 weekly unemployment booster that has been in effect since the pandemic took its first toll on the economy. It is scheduled to expire at the end of this month. As part of their argument, the institute ranked the states by the percentage of their total workforce that applied for unemployment. Oregon was fifth worst in the country with 17 percent, behind only Hawaii, Nevada, New York and Washington, DC.
The Oregonian
July 13, 2020
A forthcoming report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think-tank, scrutinises how much bosses at the 350 biggest American firms by revenue…
The Economist
July 13, 2020
Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at EPI, said that CEOs have also had a lot of control over their pay by how they select the committee that sets their pay and the practices of these committees.
Meanwhile, worker pay has stagnated. According to the EPI, the hourly compensation of the majority of American workers has not risen in line with productivity since 1973.
Marketplace
July 13, 2020
That helps explain why housing segregation persists. As the Economic Policy Institute reviewed earlier this year, just 13 percent of white students attend a school that has a majority of Black students, while nearly seven in 10 Black students do.
VOX
July 13, 2020
These fact sheets are joint publications between the Center for American Progress; the American Federation of Teachers; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Economic Policy Institute; the National Education Association; and the Service Employees International Union.
Center for American Progress
July 13, 2020
The Biden picks tilted in an egalitarian direction as well, with the co-chair slot going to Representative Karen Bass from California, the current chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a Congressional Progressive Caucus member. Biden’s five picks also included Jared Bernstein, a widely visible advocate for equity since his days at the Economic Policy Institute, and Lee Saunders, the president of one of the nation’s top public employee unions.
Inequality.org
July 13, 2020
Nationwide, the amount of jobs being recovered is still well below the pre-pandemic baseline. The Economic Policy Institute states there were 4.8 million jobs recovered in June on top of 2.7 million in May. But so many jobs were lost in March and April that the country is still 14.7 million jobs below where it was in February.
The week of June 29 marked “the 15th week in a row that unemployment claims have been more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession,” the authors state.
Snoqualmie Valley Record
July 13, 2020
The pandemic is as unlikely as the financial crisis to bring about a long-term reduction in executive pay. Research by the Economic Policy Institute shows that in the US, chief executive remuneration at the top 350 companies rose by more than half between 2009 and 2018 (this counts options as exercised; the proportion drops to 29 per cent if only options as granted are counted). At the same time, wages for the typical worker in a large firm grew by just 5 per cent.
Financial Times
July 13, 2020
Teachers now make 4.5 percent on average less than they did more than 10 years ago, according to the National Education Association, and public school teachers earn 17 percent less than what comparable workers earn, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
AlterNet
July 13, 2020