Home health aides don’t earn high wages. A 2022 Economic Policy Institute report shows that even in the highest-paying states, wages for home health aides are under $18 an hour. That leads to significant churn in the home health aide labor market, which can exacerbate this public health issue.
Tech Target
July 17, 2024
[Trump] reshaped the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that enforces labor law and investigates unfair labor practices. Led by a Trump appointee, the NLRB made what the Economic Policy Institute described as an “unprecedented” number of decisions “overturning existing worker protections.” The rulings constrained employees’ ability to form unions, organize at the workplace, and bargain with management.
Mother Jones
July 17, 2024
“Immigrants are not hurting U.S. workers,” says Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “In fact, they’re helping in terms of job growth.” Their contributions are “one of the main reasons” the economy avoided a recession in 2023, says Costa. They are also critical for the future of the country.
In These Times
July 17, 2024
A July 1, 2024, article from the Economic Policy Institute (“EPI”) (prior to New Hampshire’s July 3rd enactment of the measure) contains the following graphic:
The EPI article also notes:
“While becoming law in 25 states is critically important, the bill still has a long way to go to protect everyone. More than 10 states have considered CROWN Act bills in the past few years but failed to pass them, including Florida, New Hampshire, and Ohio.”
JD Supra
July 17, 2024
“We want them to get work experience, but we want it to be a positive experience that doesn’t set them up for potentially missing school, or I mean, worst case scenario, suffering a disabling injury that’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives,” Jen Sherer from the Economic Policy Institute said.
Iowa News Now
July 17, 2024
”We really can’t characterize this as anything other than a crisis”, said Jen Scheer, senior state policy coordinator for the economic policy institute.
She says child labor laws enacted last year in Iowa are violating the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. ”Those provisions that were included in the 2023 Iowa law… are in direct conflict with federal law.”
KCRG (Iowa)
July 17, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently updated a decade-long study that shows the American economy overall actually does better historically when a Democrat is in the White House:
Racine County Eye
July 15, 2024
That’s because recreation-dependent counties tend to have higher-than-average costs of living compared to other rural counties. In 2023, the average household income needed to support a family of four in rural recreation communities was $97,800, compared to $88,900 in other rural counties, according to a dataset compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.
Daily Yonder
July 15, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute found that realized equity compensation made up more than 81 percent of total average realized CEO pay at big corporations in 2022.
Inequality.org
July 15, 2024
Adopting this tax policy may also result in employers resisting wage hikes, using the workers’ new tax benefit as an excuse to keep pay stagnant, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Businesses also could adopt a tipping model that would move their workers into a lower-wage category, cutting their labor costs, she added.
Bloomberg Law
July 15, 2024
The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based think tank, put that number at 4.3 million workers.
Politifact
July 15, 2024
Economic Policy Institute Director of State Worker Power Project Jennifer Sherer says Iowa’s child labor law is one of the most extreme in the nation.
“We have been tracking for a couple of years now the alarming trend that there are several states across the country that have actively been attempting to weaken child labor protections just at the same time as violations of child labor standards nationally have been on the rise over the last decade,” Sherer said in a phone interview with WVIK. “And digging into this, it’s very clear that what’s behind this is a coordinated multi-industry attempt to weaken child labor standards and expand employer access to low-wage labor essentially.”
Quad Cities NPR
July 15, 2024
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington D.C., Washington, and California all have minimum wages of at least $15, according to Economic Policy Institute.
Ohio Capital Journal
July 15, 2024
Cites teacher pay penalty [paywall].
Education Week
July 15, 2024
During the 1950s, union memberships were at their highest percentage ever. At that time, overall income inequality was at its lowest point since reaching its highest before the Great Depression. That claim is backed up by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Economic Policy Institute.
WFMY News 2
July 15, 2024
Transportation companies and school districts are trying to address a nationwide shortage of school bus drivers. There were an estimated 192,400 school bus drivers transporting K-12 students last September, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That’s down from 289,720 in September 2009.
Erie Time News
July 15, 2024
Figure 3 reports the share and number of all workers in each state who earn less than $15.00 per hour. These data are accessible via the Economic Policy Institute’s Low Wage Workforce Tracker. The LWW Tracker has a sliding wage scale where the amount paid to workers can be set from $10.00 to $25.00. The output in Figure 3 is from the State Data tab where the wage was set at $15.00 to analyze those earning less than that threshold.
Counter Punch
July 15, 2024
It’s worth noting that alternative child care options can come at a steep cost. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average child care expense for preschool-age children exceeds $15,000 annually — a price many families simply can’t afford.
Spectrum News NY 1
July 15, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), between 2019 and 2023, our immigrant labor force grew yearly on average 2.3 percent; yet there’s no evidence of harm to the native-born, as our economy has also been growing. In fact, EPI also found that for U.S.-born workers, 2022-2023 was a time of “very low unemployment—and strong employment growth.” Robust growth continues to exceed expectations.
Common Dreams
July 15, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute says that the merger could result in $334 million in lost wages, affecting roughly 746,000 workers.
Slate
July 15, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute found school bus drivers make much less money than other workers.
KJRH (Oklahoma)
July 15, 2024
According to a May 2024 analysis by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, average wage growth was higher than inflation every month for the previous 12 consecutive months.
Pennsylvania Independent
July 15, 2024
The reality is 401(k) plans are great for highly educated workers who earn a lot of money. The Economic Policy Institute found these individuals were more likely to:
- Have access to a 401(k)
- Participate in a 401(k) when offered
- Have money to contribute to their 401(k)
- Receive employer matching contributions
- Take on greater investment risks, helping their portfolio balance grow
MoneyWise
July 15, 2024
“This ruling will make it harder for federal agencies to govern, operate, or enforce workers’ rights and protections effectively, meaning workers will be left exposed to more dangers, risks, and discriminatory treatment on the job,” said Economic Policy Institute’s Director of Policy Celine McNicholas in a statement. “Regulations are critical tools for establishing worker protections and it is simply common sense that agencies that Congress authorizes to administer and enforce laws should have the ability to establish the rules that most effectively effectuate those laws.”
Truthout
July 15, 2024
Many of the state-level restrictions being targeted for rollback have no counterpart in federal law.
“There’s no federal standard to fall back on” related to youth work permits, said Nina Mast, policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “It kind of makes the work permits vulnerable to attack in some of these state legislatures that are susceptible to these arguments about bureaucracy or red tape.”
Bloomberg Law
July 15, 2024
A 2018 Economic Policy Institute report found that when Amazon opens a warehouse, the number of warehouse jobs goes up, but the total number of jobs in an area does not change, with new warehousing jobs “likely offset by job losses in other industries.”
Providence Journal
July 15, 2024
Analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute has found that raising the federal minimum wage to $17 by 2028 would impact 27,858,000 workers across the U.S., or about 19% of the workforce. EPI also found that the increases would provide an additional $86 billion annually in wages for the country’s lowest-paid workers. And the average affected worker who works year-round would receive an extra $3,100 per year.
Forbes
July 15, 2024