It is no secret, Black and brown people with criminal records are stigmatized in a way that prevents them from enjoying the basic rights and privileges we often take for granted. Among them are job opportunities and long-term employment. In mid-2020, the Economic Policy Institute reported that the Black unemployment rate was nearly twice that of the overall unemployment rate in Maryland. The disparity in these figures has remained consistent throughout the pandemic, which shows no sign of slowing down.
Baltimore Sun
February 22, 2021
Before the crisis, families paid two out of three dollars spent for early care and education — the Economic Policy Institute calculated that $42 billion was spent by families out of the total $64 billion spent privately and publicly for this essential service. This crisis showed how unstable that financing system made child care programs on which working families rely.
EdNC
February 22, 2021
“You have one swath of the economy getting absolutely slammed and then a huge swath of workers who haven’t seen a decline in pay,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “In a normal recession they’d be helping to keep the economy going but that is not at all the case now.”
Lessons from previous recessions, Ms. Shierholz continued, show that without a concerted effort to provide relief to those hard-hit low-wage workers — particularly by eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers — any economic recovery will compound existing wage gaps.
New York Times
February 22, 2021
— Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department, “thinks the best answer to how many people are still affected economically by the pandemic is 25.5 million.”
Politico Morning Shift
February 22, 2021
The wage hit its peak in inflation-adjusted terms in 1968 at just over $12. Though it has been raised 14 times since then, it has not kept pace with the cost of living. The current nearly 12-year stretch is the longest it’s gone without a boost.
That means minimum wage workers are getting poorer over time, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Every year that Congress does not raise it, people get a pay cut,” he said.
CNN
February 22, 2021
It is no secret, Black and brown people with criminal records are stigmatized in a way that prevents them from enjoying the basic rights and privileges we often take for granted. Among them are job opportunities and long-term employment. In mid-2020, the Economic Policy Institute reported that the Black unemployment rate was nearly twice that of the overall unemployment rate in Maryland. The disparity in these figures has remained consistent throughout the pandemic, which shows no sign of slowing down.
Baltimore Sun
February 22, 2021
Before the crisis, families paid two out of three dollars spent for early care and education — the Economic Policy Institute calculated that $42 billion was spent by families out of the total $64 billion spent privately and publicly for this essential service. This crisis showed how unstable that financing system made child care programs on which working families rely.
EdNC
February 22, 2021
“You have one swath of the economy getting absolutely slammed and then a huge swath of workers who haven’t seen a decline in pay,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “In a normal recession they’d be helping to keep the economy going but that is not at all the case now.”
Lessons from previous recessions, Ms. Shierholz continued, show that without a concerted effort to provide relief to those hard-hit low-wage workers — particularly by eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers — any economic recovery will compound existing wage gaps.
New York Times
February 22, 2021
— Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department, “thinks the best answer to how many people are still affected economically by the pandemic is 25.5 million.”
Politico Morning Shift
February 22, 2021
The wage hit its peak in inflation-adjusted terms in 1968 at just over $12. Though it has been raised 14 times since then, it has not kept pace with the cost of living. The current nearly 12-year stretch is the longest it’s gone without a boost.
That means minimum wage workers are getting poorer over time, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Every year that Congress does not raise it, people get a pay cut,” he said.
CNN
February 22, 2021
Shierholz, the former Labor Department economist, says she thinks the best answer to how many people are still affected economically by the pandemic is 25.5 million.
Washington Post
February 19, 2021
U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth (D KY 3rd, Louisville), chair of the House Budget Committee; then William Spriggs, Howard University economics professor, chief economist to the AFL-CIO, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy (2009-2012) and Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute
WNYC
February 19, 2021
The letter from 88 groups was organized by the Center for American Progress, Public Citizen and Americans for Tax Fairness. It was signed by the AFL-CIO and other unions and by think tanks including the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
The Fiscal Times
February 19, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, nearly 31 percent of Black workers and 26 percent of Latinx workers would immediately benefit with an increase to $15 an hour. Increasing the minimum wage advances the cause of racial justice.
Boston Globe
February 19, 2021
Source: Brookings analysis of American Community Survey 2019 data and Economic Policy Institute Family Budget Calculator data.
Brookings Institution
February 19, 2021
“Raising the minimum wage would amount to a significant reduction in the deficit, according to studies done by the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics and the Economic Policy Institute,” said McCormick.
NJ Today
February 19, 2021
“The evidence is clear that minimum wage increases overwhelmingly benefit the low-wage workforce,” economist Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) wrote in an email to Insider.
Business Insider
February 19, 2021
But the gain in wages is not an unalloyed benefit to those who gain. The reason is that, as noted above, an increase in wage rates doesn’t automatically make workers more productive. So employers, looking for ways to avoid paying more to workers than their productivity is worth, would search out other ways of compensating. They might cut non-wage benefits, work the employees harder, or reduce training, to name three. Interestingly, on its website in 2006, when Congress was considering an increase in the federal minimum wage, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), an organization funded partly by labor unions, admitted the last two of these three. It stated, “employers may be able to absorb some of the costs of a wage increase through higher productivity, lower recruiting and training costs, decreased absenteeism, and increased worker morale.” How would an employer make his workers more productive and reduce absenteeism? Probably by working the employees harder and firing those who miss work. How would he reduce training costs? By providing less training. In an article in the winter 2021 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, UC-San Diego economist Jeffrey Clemens noted a negative correlation between minimum wages and employer-provided health insurance. In the workplace as in the rest of the world, there’s no free lunch.
Hoover Institution
February 19, 2021
The two biggest problems facing American manufacturing are the trade deficit and outsourcing. Over the last three decades, multi-national corporations (MNCs) decided that it was in the best interest of their shareholders to move jobs and production to low-cost foreign countries. According to the Economic Policy Institute, American corporations have outsourced more than 5 million jobs and 91,000 plants since 1998.
Industry Week
February 19, 2021
Based on pre-pandemic data, the long-term unemployment rate in a relatively healthy economy sits at around 20 percent, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
SHRM
February 19, 2021
If it had, it would have to be at least $19.33 per hour, according to a calculation back in 2017 by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Tribune-Democrat
February 18, 2021
- David Cooper, “Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers,” Economic Policy Institute, February 5, 2019, available at https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/.
Center for American Progress
February 18, 2021
Supporters say the coronavirus has made a higher minimum wage all the more urgent since workers earning it are disproportionately people of color. The liberal Economic Policy Institute found that more than 19% of Hispanic workers and more than 14% of Black workers earned hourly wages that kept them below federal poverty guidelines in 2017.
FOX 4 KC
February 18, 2021
Ms. Rhinehart, now a senior fellow at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said Ms. Abruzzo “will hit the ground running and help restore the N.L.R.B.’s credibility as an agency that protects and promotes the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively for improvements at their workplace.”
New York Times
February 18, 2021
One is changing the workplace culture and increasing diverse representation within the ranks. That includes not just hiring more Black workers and vendors, but also paying Black men and women the same as White men. Black workers make a median 75.6% of White wages, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s State of Working America Wages 2019.
CNBC
February 18, 2021
The average worker in so-called right-to-work states earns nearly $1,500 less per year, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, and is less likely to have health insurance or a pension.
Public News Service
February 18, 2021
What do gymnast Simone Biles, writers Agatha Christie and Jorge Luis Borges, and architect Antoni Gaudí have in common? They were all homeschooled, for reasons varying from health, parents’ need to travel, parents’ preferences, or their specific learning needs.
USA Today
February 18, 2021
A more recent study from the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative group associated with the restaurant industry, pegs the number of jobs that could be lost at 2 million, while the “restaurant and bar industry will account for 45% of total job losses.” (This research organization shouldn’t be confused with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning group that has its own research which comes to the opposite conclusion of its near namesake.)
Yahoo
February 18, 2021
But proponents argue that better-quality studies tend to show that increases in the minimum wage do not hurt employment. The CBO did not properly weight the higher-quality studies in its analysis, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CNN
February 18, 2021