Media clips
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The cost of child care varies widely by state and by the child’s age. In Mississippi, where costs are the lowest, families pay an average of $7,220 per year for infant care and $6,571 per year for 4-year-old care, according to a 2025 analysis by Economic Policy Institute. Families in Washington, D.C. have the highest annual costs at $29,809 on average for infant care and $23,877 for 4-year-olds. Though D.C. offers free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, EPI notes that not all families may be able to access those programs due to availability or other barriers.
CNBC September 8, 2026 -
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank, said she was stunned by some of Trump’s anti-worker actions, especially by his order last year chopping the minimum wage that federal contractors must pay their employees, to $13.30 an hour from $17.75. That move caused some workers to lose over $9,000 a year in pay.
This year, Trump rescinded a Biden-era regulation that made overtime pay available to more salaried workers. As a result, 4.3 million workers will no longer qualify for time-and-a-half overtime. (Two federal courts in Texas had ruled against Biden’s overtime regulation.) In his years as president, Trump has never pushed to raise the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage, which has greatly eroded in value since it last increased in 2009.
“The Trump administration is systematically weakening policies and institutions that give workers a voice, that give workers protections and that hold employers accountable,” Shierholz said. “He’s been doing that from day one, and since then it has absolutely continued and accelerated. You see attacks on every kind of worker protection from safety and health to wage and hour protections. Policy after policy after policy goes directly against the interests of workers.”
The Guardian September 8, 2026 -
The figure comes from the Economic Policy Institute’s Cost of Deportations Calculator. It begins with the National Priorities Project’s estimate that …[paywall].
Cincinnati Enquirer September 8, 2026 -
Economic Policy Institute who studies wages. Wages rose by 3.1% over the year ending in August. [paywall].
NOTUS September 8, 2026 -
In addition, more and more of us are producing goods and services much more efficiently. The Gross Domestic Product of the nation expanded by 2.1% in the first quarter of this year and then again by an additional 1.5% in the second quarter. The U.S. Economic Policy Institute reports the average hourly employee’s productivity has leapfrogged a staggering 90% between 1975 and 2025.
The Vindicator September 8, 2026 -
“Slowing nominal wage growth suggests workers don’t have the leverage to bid up their wages,” Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said in an email. “Even with low unemployment, the depressed hires rate means workers aren’t finding new jobs to raise their wages.”
CBS Moneywatch September 8, 2026 -
On this edition of Iowa Press, Jesse Case, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 238, and Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network and director of EPI’s Worker Power Project, discuss the labor movement and issues affecting Iowa workers.
Iowa PBS September 8, 2026 -
Jesse Case, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 238, and Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network and director of the institute’s Worker Power Project, spoke on “Iowa Press” Sept. 4 about efforts of some Iowans to unionize and the issues impacting unionized workers in the state and across the country.
Sherer told “Iowa Press” moderator Kay Henderson and Gazette Des Moines Bureau Chief Erin Murphy that this is a difficult period for Iowa workers, and that in the 30 years she’s lived in Iowa, the state’s union representation density has fallen from above to below the national average.
In 2025, the U.S. union membership rate was 10%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Henderson said currently just over 100,000 Iowans are union members, or around 6.8% of the population.
“But that’s not the end of this history,” Sherer said. “Workers are still rewriting it today, and this Labor Day and the next election cycle and everything that comes after will probably write the next chapter.”
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According to a May Economic Policy Institute report cited by Sherer in the discussion, UnityPoint Health spent more than $2.1 million on “union avoidance consultants” in 2025. The healthcare company came in second to Amazon, which spent more than $26.6 million, and the total spent on union avoidance topped $1.5 billion in the U.S.
Iowa Capital Dispatch September 8, 2026 -
When I think about labor and labor economics, I think Economic Policy Institute. So, my gift to you on this Labor Day is to briefly tell or remind you about EPI’s essential role in our economic debate and to get your butt over to their robust website, if you’re not there already—and not just on Labor Day, but everyday. The institute is a spry 40 year-old this year, and they’re at the top of their game.
It’s where I cut my teeth as a junior economist, working with EPI’s former president Larry Mishel and many co-authors on numerous volumes of “The State of Working America.”
There are three ways I’d summarize foundations upon which the Institute is built.
—First and foremost, EPI puts bargaining power in the center of their analysis.
Jared Bernstein's Substack September 8, 2026 -
School bus driver employment remained 9.5% below 2019 levels in August 2025, even as inflation-adjusted hourly wages rose 4.2% over the previous year, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis. The employment figures are based on 12-month rolling averages of federal survey data.
“The wages are simply too low,” Hilary Wething, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute told FOX Business, identifying pay as the primary reason the workforce has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Fox Business September 8, 2026