Nationwide, according to census data released fall 2019, income inequality has ballooned under Trump, reaching its worst point since the Census Bureau started measuring five decades ago. Even with low unemployment numbers, the Economic Policy Institute reports that wage growth has been sluggish.
In These Times
February 5, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reports that more than 28 million Americans would be directly impacted by a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour. Many millions more would indirectly benefit from a “spillover effect,” with employers raising the wages of workers making more than $15 per hour in order to attract and retain employees, EPI research has found.
Columbus Underground
February 5, 2020
Though wages have been slow-growing since the Great Recession, they have picked up in recent years — especially for those at the bottom. This is partly due to a minimum wage movement playing out in recent years, according to a Washington Post analysis of Labor Department data. More than 20 states raised their minimum wages at the start of 2020, affecting nearly 7 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Washington Post
February 5, 2020
As many as 56 percent of Maine employers may be using forced arbitration, according to an estimate in December by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive economic think tank.
Maine Beacon
February 5, 2020
“No matter what their job, where they live, or how much education or experience they have, Latinas are still paid less than White men,” the Economic Policy Institute explained in 2017, referring to the “double pay gap” to which Latina women are subjected, which adds the ethnic pay gap to the gender pay gap.
BE Latina
February 5, 2020
The researchers at the Economic Policy Institute do recognize the importance of the U.S. unemployment rate standing at its lowest level in decades. Thus, at the very end of the article the problem is more sharply defined as the loss of “quality,” high-paying jobs.
Los Angeles Times
February 5, 2020
Even with record low unemployment, wages have barely budged, when adjusted for inflation, from prerecession levels, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
February 5, 2020
California workers have been especially hard hit by the U.S. trade policy with China, the labor think tank Economic Policy Institute reports.
Peninsula Daily News
February 5, 2020
The striking workers, members of Teamsters Local 25 in Boston, have been on strike since August, after Republic refused to offer them a contract with a livable wage and affordable health care. On average, they are paid 40 percent below what it takes to make a living wage in Massachusetts for a family with one adult and one child, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.
Teamsters
February 5, 2020
Inflation-adjusted figures from the Economic Policy Institute, for example, show clear wage stagnation for the bottom 60 percent of the income scale. The rate did go up for the 70 and 80 percent levels, which means the 90 percent figure would be a bit exaggerated.
Politifact
February 5, 2020