Media clips

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• Most of us are not doing so well: Numbers crunching working people

  Cost-of-living calculators report how much money we need to cover such basics as housing, groceries, taxes, and health in various US localities. The Economic Policy Institute’s budget calculator, for example, tells us that in Boston two adults and two kids need $113,558 just to cover these basics. Seems like a lot of money. Many of us can recall a time when $100,000 in family income was well above middle class.

  Common Dreams October 4, 2019
• Teachers tap into crowdsourcing

  Montana teachers spend an average of $373 of their own money per school year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Social media has made it possible, however, to get more people involved in helping with classroom needs through crowdsourcing. Teachers are now tapping online funding for supplies such as pencils, dry-erase markers, cleaning products and snacks, and bigger-ticket items such as musical instruments and Chromebooks.

  Daily Inter Lake October 4, 2019
• ‘Being a teacher doesn’t pay the bills’: Here’s the starting salary of educators in each state

  In a 2016 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the organization notes an “erosion” in teacher salaries that’s been happening for decades. In the 1960s, the report says, teachers earned more than similarly educated workers, but, by the 1980s, this trend had reversed. The result is what’s known as the “teacher penalty,” defined by experts at the University of California, Berkeley, as “the percent by which public school teachers are paid less than comparable workers.”

  Between 2010 and 2018, the EPI found this “teacher penalty” to grow from 13.5 percent to 21.4, meaning teachers now make more than 20 percent less than similarly educated professionals. Fueling this problem is the fact that teachers’ salaries, when adjusted for inflation, have actually decreased over time, from $1,216 per week in 1996 to $1,195 in 2018. During this same time frame, weekly wages have actually risen $323 for other college graduates, from $1,454 in 1996 to $1,777 in 2018.

  Yahoo October 4, 2019
• How’s the economy doing? (It’s not good)

  Just to be clear, this isn’t the only study with this conclusion. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco also found that 70% of poor people remain in the bottom two quintiles. A study from the Economic Policy Institute also determined that out of 17 developed countries, America was 13th on the list for economic mobility. Furthermore, people who live in countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway or Canada are three times more likely to rise up the economic ladder than people in America.

  Medium October 4, 2019
• US adds 136,000 jobs in September as jobless rate hits 50-year low

  Wage growth grew 2.9 percent from last year, disappointing analysts but beating the pace of inflation. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post that the wage growth was slower than it should be in an economy with such low unemployment.

  “There’s a chance the recent low of 2.9 percent is a blip, but it’s certainly a troubling sign and something to watch in coming months,”

  Newsweek October 4, 2019
• It’s Jobs Day

  “What to Watch on Jobs Day How big is the teacher shortfall?” from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute

  Politico October 4, 2019
• Should bosses have to pay back their bonuses?

  Since 1978, CEO compensation has grown 940% while the average worker’s wage has increased only 12% throughout the same period, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports.

  Human Resources Director October 3, 2019
• American CEOs deserve a pay cut. Bernie Sanders has a plan to make that happen.

  This yawning CEO-worker pay gap was not always thus. The Economic Policy Institute found CEOs at the top 350 publicly traded firms earned 20 times what the typical worker was paid in 1965. That rose to 58 times worker pay by the late 1980s and kept rising, peaking at a ratio of 344-to-1 in 2000. The gap shrank during the Great Recession but is now back to the chasm-like ratios of the early 2000s.

  The Washington Post October 3, 2019
• Grad students fight back against new Trump Labor board rule

  The Economic Policy Institute has found that universities increasingly depend on graduate assistants and non-tenure track faculty, as the growth of those positions outpaces the growth of tenured and tenure-track positions, which have significantly higher pay and offer much more stability. Not only does that leave graduate students with more work while they’re in schools, but it also means their future job prospects are diminished after graduation as well.

  Truthout October 3, 2019
• Event looks at housing policy

  Rothstein is a senior fellow at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley. He’s also a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow, emeritus, at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He lives in Berkeley.

  Davis Enterprise October 3, 2019