According to the Economic Policy Institute, minimum wage increases in the late 1960s accounted for 20% of the decrease in the Black/white earnings gap in the years that followed. Concomitantly, failures to increase the minimum wage substantially after 1979 account for almost half of the increase in inequality between women at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution.
Philadelphia Gay News
March 4, 2021
Logically, it makes sense: If businesses have to pay their employees more, they would resort to raising the prices of their goods or services. And according to Ben Zipperer, an economist with expertise on low-wage labor markets at the Economic Policy Institute — which describes itself as nonpartisan — there’s some truth to it. Research has found that restaurants use small price increases as an adjustment to increased labor costs.
“There are a lot of other expenses when you run a business that have nothing to do with how many minimum wage workers you employ,” he said over Zoom. “For the typical restaurant, labor costs are only 20%-25% — minimum wage labor costs are even less than that. So when the minimum wage goes up, yes, you may need to raise prices a little bit, but you’re going to raise them much less than the actual minimum wage increase.”
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator supports this conclusion. The tool calculates the income level that types of families in different locations need to have a “modest but adequate standard of living,” Zipperer said. That means being able to afford renting an apartment, transportation, food — and for families with kids, day care.
Today Show
March 4, 2021
1A
March 3, 2021
That, said Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, is “a big contrast” from the past.
“Pre-Trump, both Democrats and Republicans, for a couple of decades, put in place trade policies that were definitely not worker-centric,” Lee said. Instead, they were, “I would say, corporate-centric.”
She said former President Donald Trump was able to harness latent resentment around jobs and industries that were lost over the years, and that is clearly something the Biden administration has tuned in to.
Marketplace
March 3, 2021
Reverend Barber mentions EPI study.
MSNBC
March 3, 2021
Our data is used in a chart.
Washington Post
March 3, 2021
Without the specter of massive job losses and soaring prices looming over minimum wage debates, there is no substantive policy reason to oppose an increase to $15 an hour. According to a forthcoming study from the Economic Policy Institute, a $15 minimum wage as implemented by the “Raise the Wage Act of 2021” would raise the wages of 21 percent of working Americans by an average of $3,300 a year and 59 percent of workers who live below the poverty level would see increases in their pay.
Daily Collegian
March 3, 2021
The evidence shows that combining checks with targeted programs is extremely effective. Recent analyses from the Urban Institute and the Economic Policy Institute found that combining checks with expanded unemployment benefits in the summer of 2020 kept upwards of 12 million people from falling into poverty — the majority of whom benefitted from direct checks.
MarketWatch
March 3, 2021
Then there’s the pathetically low federal minimum wage. Labor and civil rights activists have long called for the national wage floor to be raised to $15 an hour, which translates (assuming 40 hours a week for 50 weeks) to $30,000 a year, equivalent to less than a quarter of the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) no-frills Basic Family Budget for a family of two parents and two children in the New York City borough (and New York State county) of Queens.
Counterpunch
March 3, 2021
According to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy, a forward-thinking approach to investing in education will help to equip today’s and tomorrow’s citizens with the skills and attitudes they need for economic and civic success.
MagicValley.com
March 3, 2021
And the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), among other worker-advocate groups, disputed some of the CBO’s findings, claiming that there would be little to no effect on employment. Plus, the EPI said there would be other benefits that would save billions.
“If the 2021 Raise the Wage Act were passed and the federal hourly minimum wage increased to $15 by 2025, we estimate that annual government expenditures on major public assistance programs would fall by between $13.4 billion and $31.0 billion,” the EPI wrote this month.
The Daily Wire
March 3, 2021
Furner said the increased spending could support more than 750,000 new American jobs, based on a Walmart study with Boston Consulting Group that used data from the Economic Policy Institute and Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CNBC
March 3, 2021
The pandemic has disproportionately affected the employment of Black and Hispanic workers. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in an analysis that Black workers are less likely to be in jobs that can be done remotely and more likely to be in jobs considered essential or in jobs that have experienced major job losses amid the pandemic.
Business Insider
March 3, 2021
But much of that wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a few dozen county residents. According to the most recent data available from the Economic Policy Institute, Rappahannock County ranks in the 17th percentile for income inequality when compared with all U.S. counties. That means the difference between what the top 1% of county residents earn and what the bottom 99% earn is among the highest in the country. And what’s more, Rappahannock County Public Schools estimates that 13-16% of Rappahannock families live below the federal poverty line.
Rappahannock News
March 3, 2021
The average CEO of a large public firm earns about 320 times as much as a typical worker, according to a report released in 2020 by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). CEO compensation has continued to surge and could rise again despite the pandemic, according to the report. CEO pay for the top 350 firms in the U.S. surged 14% in 2019 to $21.3 million. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%.
MSN Money
March 3, 2021
1A
March 3, 2021
Reverend Barber mentions EPI study.
MSNBC
March 3, 2021
That, said Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, is “a big contrast” from the past.
“Pre-Trump, both Democrats and Republicans, for a couple of decades, put in place trade policies that were definitely not worker-centric,” Lee said. Instead, they were, “I would say, corporate-centric.”
She said former President Donald Trump was able to harness latent resentment around jobs and industries that were lost over the years, and that is clearly something the Biden administration has tuned in to.
Marketplace
March 3, 2021
Our data is used in a chart.
Washington Post
March 3, 2021
Without the specter of massive job losses and soaring prices looming over minimum wage debates, there is no substantive policy reason to oppose an increase to $15 an hour. According to a forthcoming study from the Economic Policy Institute, a $15 minimum wage as implemented by the “Raise the Wage Act of 2021” would raise the wages of 21 percent of working Americans by an average of $3,300 a year and 59 percent of workers who live below the poverty level would see increases in their pay.
Daily Collegian
March 3, 2021
The evidence shows that combining checks with targeted programs is extremely effective. Recent analyses from the Urban Institute and the Economic Policy Institute found that combining checks with expanded unemployment benefits in the summer of 2020 kept upwards of 12 million people from falling into poverty — the majority of whom benefitted from direct checks.
MarketWatch
March 3, 2021
According to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy, a forward-thinking approach to investing in education will help to equip today’s and tomorrow’s citizens with the skills and attitudes they need for economic and civic success.
MagicValley.com
March 3, 2021
Then there’s the pathetically low federal minimum wage. Labor and civil rights activists have long called for the national wage floor to be raised to $15 an hour, which translates (assuming 40 hours a week for 50 weeks) to $30,000 a year, equivalent to less than a quarter of the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) no-frills Basic Family Budget for a family of two parents and two children in the New York City borough (and New York State county) of Queens.
Counterpunch
March 3, 2021
And the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), among other worker-advocate groups, disputed some of the CBO’s findings, claiming that there would be little to no effect on employment. Plus, the EPI said there would be other benefits that would save billions.
“If the 2021 Raise the Wage Act were passed and the federal hourly minimum wage increased to $15 by 2025, we estimate that annual government expenditures on major public assistance programs would fall by between $13.4 billion and $31.0 billion,” the EPI wrote this month.
The Daily Wire
March 3, 2021
Furner said the increased spending could support more than 750,000 new American jobs, based on a Walmart study with Boston Consulting Group that used data from the Economic Policy Institute and Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CNBC
March 3, 2021
The pandemic has disproportionately affected the employment of Black and Hispanic workers. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in an analysis that Black workers are less likely to be in jobs that can be done remotely and more likely to be in jobs considered essential or in jobs that have experienced major job losses amid the pandemic.
Business Insider
March 3, 2021
But much of that wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a few dozen county residents. According to the most recent data available from the Economic Policy Institute, Rappahannock County ranks in the 17th percentile for income inequality when compared with all U.S. counties. That means the difference between what the top 1% of county residents earn and what the bottom 99% earn is among the highest in the country. And what’s more, Rappahannock County Public Schools estimates that 13-16% of Rappahannock families live below the federal poverty line.
Rappahannock News
March 3, 2021