Companies were required to report median employee compensation for the first time last year, thanks to newly enacted Dodd-Frank rules, which were implemented as part of an overhaul of the consumer finance system following Wall Street’s financial crisis (the rule was adopted in 2015 and went into effect in 2017). So authoritative pay-ratio data, over time, is limited. However, the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in a smaller analysis of the top 350 US companies, estimates that the ratio of CEO pay to that of a typical employee was more like 15 to 1 in 1965. The ratio among that grouping rose to 221 to 1 in 2017. (The disparity between this and the Equilar data has to do with sample size as well as methodology.)
VOX
May 6, 2019
Early in the morning on Nov. 26, 2018, Dave Green, the president of Local 1112 of the United Auto Workers, which represents workers at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, received a call from the plant’s personnel director. Green needed to be at the plant at 9 a.m. for a meeting. The personnel director rarely called Green, and when he did, it was almost always bad news. Green got into his car — a silver Chevy Cruze — and sped toward the hulking 6.2-million-square-foot factory, which had manufactured nearly two million Cruzes since the car was introduced in 2011.
The New York Times
May 6, 2019
Some progressive economists dispute the estimate, however. Robert Scott, of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which receives some labor union funding, questioned the report’s assumptions that new protections for Mexican workers would both come to fruition and produce the projected gains for U.S. workers.
Huffington Post
May 6, 2019
Wages actually fell two percent, adjusted for inflation, from December 2017 to December 2018, reports the Economic Policy Institute. But it would have been fruitless to wait for the promised largesse. The Communications Workers of America made a gallant effort to get commitments for corporations to pass on the tax savings to their workers, to no avail, the Center For Public Integrity reports:
Counter Patch
May 6, 2019
In addition, national assessments about the graying of the American workforce typically marginalize the staggering impact aging has on the livelihood of women of color workers. According to the AARP, age discrimination-related EEO complaints filed by African Americans have dramatically increased since the 1990s. Once Black women hit their fifties, they are at greater risk for job insecurity, career stagnation, unemployment, health challenges, bankruptcy, eviction, and homelessness. Older Black women who have spent most of their lives as sole or primary breadwinners (an estimated 80% according to the Economic Policy Institute) are also more likely to be saddled with caring for multiple generations, making retirement an elusive fantasy.
LA Progressive
May 6, 2019
“You’re not going to solve the opioid crisis through minimum wage increases,” said David Cooper, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s not a silver bullet.”
Huffington Post
May 6, 2019
“Minimum wage workers are falling further and further behind,” said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on low to middle-income workers that is based in Washington, D.C. “Minimum wage increases have been too infrequent and not large enough in order to keep pace with the rest of the economy.”
May 6, 2019
The Teamsters have already endorsed the legislation, saying in a statement that it would “restore fairness to the economy at a time when income inequality has stifled the ability of far too many hardworking Americans to earn a decent wage that allows them to support their families.” The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, also praised the bill. “The PRO Act is an important effort to bring U.S. labor law into the 21st century — giving working people more power at a time when it is desperately needed,” Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs, announced in a public statement.
New York Magazine
May 6, 2019
“The unemployment rate fell for the ‘wrong‘ reasons — more people leaving the labor force as opposed to getting a job,” Elise Gould, an economist for the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement.
Politico
May 6, 2019
“Income inequality is the primary reason why the vast majority of Americans experienced disappointing growth in their living standard over the last four decades,” testified Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “In other words, most Americans are seeing slow income growth because most of overall income growth is going to households at the top. Labor market income represents the largest source of income for most Americans, and that is why we cannot tackle income inequality without tackling wage growth,” she said.
Accounting Today
May 6, 2019