Con:
Ismael Cid-Martinez
Work requirements hinder Medicaid’s ability to provide health coverage and serve as a source of economic support to families in need. They effectively act as cuts to the program by making eligibility much more onerous and costly. This is true not just for those who face steep barriers to finding steady employment. It also holds for those who are already working enough to meet the requirements but find the bureaucratic process of satisfactorily documenting this to overworked state agencies too burdensome.
CQ Researcher
January 5, 2026
Valerie Wilson, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, said that priorities like dismantling DEI have “turned the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect, given the long history of racial discrimination and exploitation” in the United States.
The Washington Post
January 5, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute of Nebraska found the $1.50 an hour increase in minimum wage to $15 an hour will amount to an average annual wage increase of $980.
Nebraska Public MEdia
January 5, 2026
Putting more money in workers’ pockets is a good affordability policy, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The New Year’s Day pay bumps across the country will benefit more than 8.3 million workers.
Arizona Family
January 5, 2026
The report analyzed affordability in 160 major metro areas using cost estimates from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and U.S. Census demographic data.
Minnesota Star Tribune
January 5, 2026
These are the 19 states are raising their minimum wage starting Jan. 1 and what they will raise it to, according to the Economic Policy Institute and the U.S. Department of Labor:
SunHerald
January 5, 2026
On January 1, 2026, Ohio’s minimum wage will increase by 30-cents to $11.00 per hour. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that approximately 103,800 Ohioans paid less than $11.00 will experience a direct wage increase, and 169,300 more Ohioans will likely see an increase in their wages as employers adjust their pay scales. The minimum wage for tipped workers will increase to $5.50, with direct or projected indirect effects on every one of the 97,100 Ohioans in tipped occupations.
Dayton Weekly
January 5, 2026
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Trump’s claims that his immigration policies are creating job market opportunities for U.S.-born workers are “false and based on a misreading of data from the household survey.”
Daily Beast
January 5, 2026
An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report found that Trump’s deportation agenda will potentially eliminate 6 million jobs.
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“There is a very strong likelihood that the NLRB will achieve quorum in the new year and begin a more aggressive attack on workers’ right to organize and collectively bargain,” Margaret Poydock, a senior policy analyst at EPI, told Truthout. “President Trump is the largest union buster in U.S. history, and his interference with the independence of the NLRB will result in the further weakening of our nation’s labor laws.”
Truthout
January 5, 2026
Several other New England states saw a modest minimum pay bump at the start of the new year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Boston Globe
January 5, 2026