The liberal Economic Policy Institute has published 13 charts that it says show us where our economic priorities ought to be in 2020. The one above is No. 11. Here’s the text EPI wrote to go with it:
School teacher strikes made the news over and over again in 2019, highlighting the profound disinvestment in the nation’s public schools that has been taking place over recent decades. A growing teacher pay penalty is a critical component of that, as seen in this chart.
The teacher pay penalty has not been a fact of U.S. life forever—as recently as the mid-1990s, teacher pay was reasonably competitive. But in the past two decades or more, the relative pay of teachers has collapsed. By 2018, the teacher pay penalty had grown to more than 20%. While teachers do, on average, receive more valuable benefits than their professional peers, these better benefits do not make up for the huge gap in cash compensation. Given the vast reams of research showing the importance of teacher quality to student outcomes, this disinvestment in the pay of teachers is extraordinarily destructive to the quality of the nation’s public education system.
Daily Kos
February 3, 2020
In contrast, the average for all working-age families is shockingly low. Their median nest egg was a paltry $5,000 as of 2013, the latest year for which the Economic Policy Institute has data. That’s because many working-age families had little or zero savings.
Investor's Business Daily
February 3, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute said in its “State of American Retirement Savings” report that 70% of those in top 20% of earners ages 32 to 61 participate in a 401(k) plan at work.
Winston-Salem Journal
February 3, 2020
And teachers may become more sparse. The Economic Policy Institute predicts a widening teacher shortage in the next five years.
KFYR TV
February 3, 2020
Since the Great Recession of 2008, the country lost 60,000 jobs in education, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs remain unfilled.
St. Louis/Southern Illinois Labor Tribune
February 3, 2020
Unfortunately, financial support for Virginia’s educators and public schools has not kept pace with what Virginia’s children, including Virginia’s EL students, deserve. The Commonwealth Institute (TCI) reports that our current funding formula investing in EL students falls below the national average. Data from the National Education Association, Economic Policy Institute and Education Law Center at Rutgers University reveal that Virginia ranks significantly lower compared to other states for teacher pay and per-student spending — factors that contribute to educational inequities for EL students and all children in the commonwealth.
Getting Smart
February 3, 2020
Oklahoma Policy Center
February 3, 2020
So said the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Jan 10, reacting to that day’s release of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment and wage numbers for December. The numbers showed that December’s payroll employment grew by 145,000 jobs, and the nation’s jobless rate came in at 3.5 percent, a record-low number that was steady compared to November.
Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council
February 3, 2020
African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to experience poverty than white Americans, the Economic Policy Institute finds. They are more likely to live in places with limited economic opportunities and fewer resources, and to experience housing discrimination, incarceration and a lack of access to health care.
CNN
February 3, 2020
It’s a similar story in Washington, D.C.: Of the 38 percent of users who are interested in moving outside the increasingly unaffordable D.C. metro—where median incomes for families of four are $40,000 less than the salaries the Economic Policy Institute estimates will allow you to live comfortably—about 15 percent are hunting in nearby Baltimore, Maryland, which is in commuter range. Another 15 percent are looking at Philadelphia.
City Lab
February 3, 2020