A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute suggested that subjecting tipped workers to a separate and lower minimum wage “creates a host of problems,” among them, making them more vulnerable to wage theft.
Colorado Politics
December 11, 2025
Not only that, but a report from the Economic Policy Institute also published earlier this year shows 37% of tipped workers make so little they already aren’t paying federal income tax. So, the “No Tax on Tips” wouldn’t affect them. Meanwhile, Yazmin said everything is getting more expensive.
WFMZ
December 11, 2025
As a result of this intransigence, the federal minimum wage today has the lowest real value that it has had since at least 1956. In 2022, researchers with the Economic Policy Institute estimated that in the 13 years since the last minimum wage increase, prices had increased by more than 27 percent.
Truthout
December 11, 2025
Axios Columbus
December 11, 2025
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute think tank, wrote in a Dec. 5 blog post that federal statistical agencies such as the BLS and the Census Bureau provide critical “gold standard data” for understanding the labor market.
She added that without the data, it will “materially harm” the Federal Reserve’s ability to make a data-informed decision on the interest rate policy, which is expected to be announced on Wednesday afternoon.
Manufacturing Dive
December 11, 2025
Heidi Shierholz, chief economist for the Department of Labor during President Barack Obama’s tenure, tells Newsweek there is “undeniably a deterioration in employment conditions for the U.S.’s blue-collar workers.”
AlterNet
December 8, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, if pay for typical workers had kept pace with productivity over the last 45 years, paychecks would be about 40% larger today.
Salt Lake City Weekly
December 8, 2025
The Fiscal Times
December 8, 2025
—Real incomes and wages must rise so people can get back their buying power. I’ve underscored the essential nature of this part of the solution, but not nearly as compellingly as Heidi Shierholz from EPI:
Today’s affordability debate, however, focuses almost entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life affordable is to make things cheaper. But that approach misses the bigger picture. Affordability depends on both prices and wages. The roots of today’s affordability crisis actually lie not in recent price spikes, but in the long-term suppression of workers’ pay.
Jared Bernstein's Substack
December 8, 2025
It’s not an either or situation. “The roots of today’s affordability crisis actually lie not in recent price spikes,” according to Heidi Shierholz, president at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the US Department of Labor, “but in the long-term suppression of workers’ pay.”
Common Dreams
December 8, 2025