In the late 1990s, the rates of multiple jobholders were “much higher,” said economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
Agence France Press (AFP)
October 7, 2024
The U.S. economy added 254,000 new positions in the month of September, topping economist expectations of 150,000 jobs. Economic Policy Institute Senior Economist Elise Gould joins Morning Brief to share her insights on this latest labor market data.
Gould emphasizes that this report reinforces the strength of the labor market, stating, “It was strong before, and this is another strong report.” She highlights the positive indicators: a decrease in the unemployment rate and upward revisions adding 72,000 jobs to previous months’ figures. These factors paint a picture of a “quite strong” labor market.
Yahoo Finance TV
October 7, 2024
Between 1979 and 2024, productivity in the U.S. soared by 80.9%, while hourly pay grew by just 29.4%, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute.
This trend has often been referred to as wage stagnation. But more recently, some economists have suggested that deliberate policy decisions have actively suppressed workers’ wage growth.
One reason might be the unreasonably high rate of unemployment in the U.S.
“Economists produce this thing they call the natural rate of unemployment,” explained Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s like the lowest unemployment can go without generating inflation.”
CNBC
October 7, 2024
Unions can “promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions,” said the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Pushes by unions for higher wages seem to be working, as the 17 states with the highest union densities “have state minimum wages that are on average 19% higher than the national average.”
The Week
October 7, 2024
Immigration has undoubtedly changed the U.S. economy, especially since the pandemic. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.
The Washington Post
October 7, 2024
Agence France Press (AFP)
October 7, 2024
“We should really be leaning into taxes for the rich,” Heidi Shierholz, chief economist at the Department of Labor under the Obama administration and now president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told Capital & Main. Harris’ cutoff of $400,000 for tax hikes suggests anyone making less than this figure is not rich. Shierholz argued that while there are different ways to define the term, this limit may be too high: “In my mind, essentially every possible way of defining the wealthy will include some people making less than $400,000 a year.”
Capital & Main
October 7, 2024
“Are some folks still having a hard time? Absolutely,” noted EPI senior economist Elise Gould in a blog post. “Even when the unemployment rate is low, there are still sidelined workers, and it remains difficult for many families to make ends meet on wages that are still too low.”
CBS Moneywatch
October 7, 2024
Employers would be no different, and shifts to current pay structures should be expected. Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at EPI Action — a left-leaning nonpartisan organization advocating for economic justice — told Business Insider that businesses could pay their workers slightly less to allow employees to have the financial benefit of not having their overtime pay or tips taxed.
“Their employer can pay less to keep them but the worker is not worse off because now they don’t have to pay taxes on that,” Shierholz said.
Business Insider
October 7, 2024
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local government employees earned, on average, about 10% less in total compensation—including pay and benefits—than their private-sector peers, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that receives some funding from labor unions. Post-COVID, that gap has only widened to about 14.5% less.
Route Fifty
October 7, 2024
“As a bundle, the policies are pretty terrible,” Dr. Josh Bivens, a Chief Economist and Senior Researcher with the Economic Policy Institute said. “They will raise taxes on the vast majority of households on net while cutting taxes for the very rich and maintaining the tax cuts on corporations. They will create all sorts of weird unintended effects. No big problem currently facing US working families is really addressed.
“If they’re all undertaken, it is a near guarantee that the result would be higher interest rates and higher inflation,” Bivens said.
The Independent
October 7, 2024
While in office, Trump set the overtime salary threshold lower than the one that had been set in a rule but had been blocked under former President Barack Obama, leaving millions of workers ineligible for automatic overtime, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Michigan Independent
October 7, 2024
Special Guest: Heidi Shierholz
Heidi is President of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Under her leadership, EPI has fought for legislative and regulatory reforms that support collective bargaining, increase worker power, improve wages, benefits, and working conditions, and reduce racial and gender inequities. Heidi is a Former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor under President Obama. As Chief Economist for the DOL, she focused on boosting workers’ rights, wages, and benefits.
Maggie and the Millionaires Podcast
October 7, 2024
Although anxiety spiked following a weaker-than-expected July jobs report coupled with a drastic downward annual employment numbers revision, August’s solid job gains and Friday’s report — which included upward revisions to both July and August — should put those concerns to rest, Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview.
“The labor market is strong,” she said. “When we compare it to four years ago, during the pandemic, it’s clearly much stronger; but even when you compare it to 2019, before the pandemic began. Real wage growth is up, a lot of jobs have been added.”
CNN Business
October 7, 2024
Fiscal Times
October 7, 2024
Last week the Immigration Research Initiative in New York and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., co-released a one-page infographic showing how immigration benefits the U.S. economy.
Together, immigrant workers and business owners generated $19 trillion in economic output in the U.S. in 2022, the groups reported.
Wisconsin Examiner
October 7, 2024
The average annual cost for infant care in Massachusetts is $21,913, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For one child, that’s 22.7% of a median family’s income, or 41 weeks of full time pay for a minimum wage worker.
NBC Boston
October 7, 2024
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit, said it is a “baseless conspiracy theory that nonpartisan BLS employees are committing fraud.”
…
Rubio’s claims are “deeply corrosive because of the trust put in [BLS] numbers,” said Shierholz, who is also a labor economist.
“They’re used to set policy, including the Federal Reserve’s incredibly impactful decisions about interest rate policy,” she said. “We need people to know they’re doing good work and that they should answer correctly to the surveys.”
The Washington Post
October 7, 2024
A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida had the highest rate of minimum wage violations among the country’s 10 most populated states, beating out other populous states like New York, California and Texas.
Orlando Weekly
October 7, 2024
Instead of fighting to bring back a more rigorous duties test, the Department of Labor chose the “brighter line” of raising the salary threshold, said Heidi Shierholz, the Economic Policy Institute’s president. Before the July bump, only 8.5 percent of salaried workers fell under the threshold. By January, that proportion could rise to 30 percent—covering plenty of those assistant bingo managers—and the threshold will update every three years, rising in tandem with wage data.
In the short term, the benefits are clear. If your employer decides to “bump you up to the new salary threshold, then you get that wage increase,” Shierholz explained. If not—if you remain below the cutoff— “then now you’re in the world where your employer has skin in the game when they ask you to work a gajillion hours,” since that extra labor will no longer be free. “You either get more money,” she said, “or you get your time back.”
The Nation
October 7, 2024
Between the end of World War II and the mid-1970s, as the Economic Policy Institute has famously documented, the median wages of American workers rose at the identical rate that productivity rose. Since then, as the rate of unionization declined and as companies shifted more revenues to profits and less to wages, that has ceased to be the case.
American Prospect
October 7, 2024
Progress for many workers’ rights issues was stagnant leading into 2016, and Trump tapped into that frustration, Celine McNicholas, policy director at nonpartisan research organization Economic Policy Institute Action, previously told USA TODAY.
“He was maybe the first Republican in a long time to kind of, like actually give some voice to that outrage,” she said. “But I think it stops there.”
She said he proposed cuts to worker protection agencies, and Economic Policy Institute called moves under his administration to overturn worker protections “unprecedented.”
USA Today
October 7, 2024
Regarding those wage gains, it’s worth noting that the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan but liberal-leaning research organization in Washington, found that wage gains for lower- and middle-wage workers outpaced those of higher-wage earners through 2023.
Detroit Free Press
October 7, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 24% of Latina mothers live in poverty compared to 12% of white, non-Hispanic mothers. The stark reality is that without significant changes, this pay gap will continue to affect the livelihoods and futures of millions of Latino families.
Our Latinx Magazine
October 4, 2024
Fiscal Times
October 4, 2024
This trend, particularly among the building trades, Ascher said, followed the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement — a pact among the United States, Mexico and Canada — that the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank affiliated with the labor movement, says led to the loss of thousands of union jobs.
Capital News Service Maryland
October 4, 2024
In the late 1990s, the rates of multiple jobholders were “much higher,” said economist Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
Agence France Press (AFP)
October 4, 2024
The U.S. economy added 254,000 new positions in the month of September, topping economist expectations of 150,000 jobs. Economic Policy Institute Senior Economist Elise Gould joins Morning Brief to share her insights on this latest labor market data.
Gould emphasizes that this report reinforces the strength of the labor market, stating, “It was strong before, and this is another strong report.” She highlights the positive indicators: a decrease in the unemployment rate and upward revisions adding 72,000 jobs to previous months’ figures. These factors paint a picture of a “quite strong” labor market.
Yahoo Finance TV
October 4, 2024
Between 1979 and 2024, productivity in the U.S. soared by 80.9%, while hourly pay grew by just 29.4%, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute.
This trend has often been referred to as wage stagnation. But more recently, some economists have suggested that deliberate policy decisions have actively suppressed workers’ wage growth.
One reason might be the unreasonably high rate of unemployment in the U.S.
“Economists produce this thing they call the natural rate of unemployment,” explained Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s like the lowest unemployment can go without generating inflation.”
CNBC
October 4, 2024