The new rule, called the “Adverse Effect Wage Rate Methodology for the Temporary Employment of H-2A Nonimmigrants in Non-Range Occupations in the United States,” says the wage in California for Skill Level One farmworkers will be $16.45 per hour. That’s a nickel below the state’s minimum wage this year. There is a higher Skill Level Two wage, of $18.71, but Daniel Costa, immigration director for the Economic Policy Institute, believes that “more than 90 percent of H-2A workers will get the lower wage.”
The Nation
October 14, 2025
Even before personnel cuts and the plan for more onerous terms for getting disability benefits, wait times for accessing disability benefits were far too long. According to the Economic Policy Institute, as of February 2025, the process averaged 236 days for decisions issued in the initial stage and 277 days for cases that were appealed. Over a million people are waiting on an appeal, with tens of thousands dying while awaiting a decision.
American Prospect
October 14, 2025
“Trump is obsessed with a lot of the aesthetics of being pro-worker,” said Samantha Sanders, government affairs director at the Economic Policy Institute, a thinktank.
She cited an appearance at the White House in April in the company of coal miners and a giant banner of Trump’s face hung from the Department of Labor building in Washington DC.
“But when it comes down to actual actions, we know, from his personal life to his policy life, he just does not deliver on those things,” she said.
The Guardian
October 14, 2025
Even when economists describe “rapid shifts” or “structural changes,” the paper lets that coded language stand unchallenged. “Rapid shifts” means sabotage. “Structural changes” means dismantling equity by design. Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute calls the pace “out of the ordinary.” She’s being polite. It’s engineered. And the Times buries that truth beneath charts and quotes that normalize the violence.
Dr. Stacey Patterson Substack
October 14, 2025
The African American unemployment rate has surged over the past four months, from 6 to 7.5 percent, while the rate for white people ticked down slightly to 3.7 percent. On top of a slowing economy, the White House’s actions have disproportionately harmed Black workers, economists said.
“I think the speed at which things have changed, in such a dramatic fashion, is out of the ordinary,” said Valerie Wilson, who directs the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “There’s been such a rapid shift in policy, rather than something cyclical or structural about the economy.”
…
Job losses are concentrated among Black women working in professional services such as human resources, according to Ms. Wilson’s analysis of federal data. A hiring freeze and mass layoffs in the federal work force, which have continued during the government shutdown and now exceed 200,000, have also fallen disproportionately on Black workers.
New York Times
October 14, 2025
Trump’s mass deportations will have a ‘devastating’ toll on the economy, according to the Economic Policy Institute non-profit, which based this on a study out of DC.
Daily Mail
October 14, 2025
A 2024 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that government antiwage theft efforts recovered more than $1.5 billion dollars in stolen wages for American workers in only a two-year period, between 2021 and 2023 (6). “Wage theft,” they say, “is pervasive across all industries and income levels in the country.”
MoneyWise
October 14, 2025
Research from the Economic Policy Institute estimatef that a national deportation of 4 million people, as proposed by the Trump administration, could eliminate 6 million jobs nationally, including nearly 50,000 in Oregon.
Public News Service
October 14, 2025
In 2021, years before the H-1B program became the object of political controversy, Economic Policy Institute published its findings that “thousands of skilled migrants with H-1B visas working as subcontractors at well-known corporations like Disney, FedEx, Google, and others appear to have been underpaid by at least $95 million.” The organization went on to note: “Victims include not only the H-1B workers but also the U.S. workers who are either displaced or whose wages and working conditions degrade when employers are allowed to underpay skilled migrant workers with impunity.”
Republican-American
October 14, 2025