Though private companies offer an average of eight days per year, only 30 percent of the lowest paid workers are able to earn sick days, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Economic Times
March 4, 2020
A 2017 study from the Economic Policy Institute found the earnings gap between college graduates and those who just graduated from high school is at its highest point ever. College graduates, on average, earned 56% more than high school grads in a given year.
The Roanoke Times
March 4, 2020
One of the most unexpectedly powerful essays in the collection is titled, appropriately, “America’s Largest Property Crime.” Shockingly, the largest property crime in the United States, by far, is wage theft. In fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute, wage theft costs American laborers more than $50 billion a year—a phenomenon so extensive, Harris writes, “that it dwarfs the economic cost of every other crime combined, which in 2008 the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated at a mere $17.4 billion.” Yet, as he explains, when bosses refuse to pay, or underpay, their employees, the police don’t handle it; instead, enforcement authority is vested in the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. This Division is almost comically underfunded compared to its broad mandate, and its investigations rarely result in settlements that make the victims whole. “Employers aren’t wrong to think they can get away with wage theft,” Harris writes, “and many if not most of them do.” With the authorities so hopelessly outmatched—and with wage theft often “the difference between homelessness and shelter, or saving for retirement and a lifetime of subsistence pay”—the only viable solution is to support that last, great bulwark against employer domination: unions.
The New Republic
March 4, 2020
The teacher shortage in America has been persistently growing in the last couple of decades. According to studies that were done by the Economic Policy Institute, the teacher shortage in America was around 110,000 vacancies in 2018 and it could be up to 200,000 vacancies by 2025.
The Bengal
March 4, 2020
“From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Daily Targum
March 4, 2020
All the public health warnings in the world can’t always stand up against the need to bring home a paycheck. Just 27 percent of people whose wages fall in the bottom 10 percent are able to earn paid sick leave from their job, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Any less pay eats into their basic needs: As EPI put it, the lost wages from missing three days of work can equal a month’s worth of groceries or their monthly utility bills.
VOX
March 4, 2020
As this graphic from the Economic Policy Institute shows wages at the bottom are up because of those states and localities that increased the minimum wage.
Raw Story
March 4, 2020
The Lower Class worker was earning less money in 2013 than in 1979 — adjusted for inflation — according to the Economic Policy Institute. Like, 5% less.
Pagosa Daily Post
March 4, 2020