In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute released a report which found that American employers are stealing about $15 billion from workers’ paychecks every year. That study, along with various other reports of growing abuse, has resulted in calls for reform.
FindLaw
August 23, 2019
That widening gulf might be reflected in this new report from the Economic Policy Institute, which showed that, from “1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5% [valued based on when options granted] (940.3% under the options-realized measure), far outstripping S&P stock market growth (706.7%) and the wage growth of very high earners (339.2%). In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9.
Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation
August 23, 2019
Here’s a statistic that should bother us all: According to the Economic Policy Institute, compensation for CEOs has risen over 800 percent from 1978 to 2016. That far outpaces the growth of the stock market during that period. And worse, during that same time, the typical worker’s annual compensation rose a paltry 11.2 percent.
Hawaii Catholic Herald
August 23, 2019
The Star Tribune missed an opportunity to achieve balanced reporting in “Worker pay stagnates as it soars for CEOs” (August 19). The article amounted to an uncritical summary of a report produced by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute, without any alternative research or viewpoints.
First, the piece failed to reveal the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is largely funded and run by labor unions and left-wing academics. EPI is described as a nonprofit think tank “that focuses on low- and middle-income Americans,” language lifted almost word-for-word from their website.
Star Tribune
August 23, 2019
If you are an average American worker, you’ve seen the buying power of your wages remain flat since 1973, while earners in the top 10% have seen their wages grow at five times the rate of those in the bottom half. Since 1978, in actual dollars (not inflation-adjusted), the average American worker has seen wages increase by just 12%. CEOs, meanwhile, have seen their compensation grow by 940% in the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Enid News & Eagle
August 23, 2019
Generous stock options have helped boost CEO pay by a whopping 940 percent since 1978, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while wages for a typical worker grew only 12 percent during the same period.
Houston Chronicle
August 23, 2019
Valerie Wilson, director of Economic Policy Institute’s Program of Race, Ethnicity and the Economy says Black women are experiencing a pay gap on the basis of both gender and race.
“We know that there is a racial wage gap that exists on average between Black workers and white workers, but then on top of that, Black women have the added penalty imposed by gender. There is also a gender gap,” she said.
The Philadelphia Tribune
August 23, 2019
According to a study by The Economic Policy Institute, union membership is one of the key factors that can help determine if black women are paid fairly for their work:
“Black women have traditionally faced a double pay gap—a gender pay gap and a racial wage gap. EPI research has shown that black women are paid only 65 cents of the dollar that their white male counterparts are paid. However, unions help reduce these pay gaps. Working black women in unions are paid 94.9 percent of what their black male counterparts make, while nonunion black women are paid just 91 percent of their counterparts.”
UFCW
August 23, 2019
Average CEO pay in the U.S. in 1978 was $1.7 million. Adjusted for inflation, it was $17 million last year, a 10x increase, according to a new report by Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe at the Economic Policy Institute (h/t Ian Bremmer).
Axios
August 23, 2019
At the same time, the number of teacher vacancies have exceeded 100,000 jobs in the past four years, said Elaine Weiss of the Economic Policy Institute. She said school budgets had been slow to recover from the last recession, while a relatively robust economy today offers better paying career options that have deterred many would-be teachers.
“It helped exacerbate the teacher shortage and put more pressure on states,” Weiss said.
AP
August 23, 2019