Durbin’s office asserts that 2.3 million workers in Illinois earn less than $15 and hour in wages. Economic Policy Institute is cited as indicating wages for 40 million people nationwide would increase — or 30 percent of the workforce. According to Durbin’s math, that equates to $3,500 in annual pay increase to the average worker. The Economic Policy Institute, characterized by Politico as a “left-leaning” organization has also criticized the CBO report for being too conservative in its projected financial impact with a $15 per hour wage increase.
The McDonough County Voice
July 12, 2019
“In Pennsylvania, raising the minimum wage to $15 is not going to lead to a “benefits cliff” because, as data from the Economic Policy Institute shows, most low-wage workers in Pennsylvania who would benefit from a minimum wage increase are single or married adults without dependent children (76 percent), and 55 percent work 35 hours or more per week,” the briefing paper reads.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star
July 12, 2019
“While they are acknowledging some of the research,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Ben Zipperer told The Washington Post, “I think they are drawing on older research that the new research has pointed out is problematic.” Berkeley economist Michael Reich and UMass-Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube made similar points, with Reich saying that the CBO’s equal reliance on high- and low-quality studies “reveals an unwillingness to recognize the major differences in scientific quality among studies.”
Daily Kos
July 12, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, conducted a separate analysis in February showing how the Ohio Valley region would be affected by a $15 minimum wage by 2024. The policy group’s research shows across the nation about 40 million workers would see an increase in pay, and parts of the Ohio Valley would see some of the most pronounced effects in the country.
The Economic Policy Institute report is based on data from the American Community Survey. The states are broken up into Congressional districts where people live and not necessarily where they work. EPI said the CBO’s report overestimates the number of job losses that would come from raising the minimum wage.
WOUB Public Media
July 12, 2019
The CBO is far from the only group weighing in on the issue. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has estimated a boost to $15 would lift pay for around 40 million workers. CBO’s report shows that as many as 3.7 million workers could lose their jobs if the wage was $15, but EPI said the move would still be a net positive.
“More and more, economists are recognizing that simple, dated models of the economy that always predict job loss when the minimum wage is increased are based on assumptions that have little bearing on the low-wage labor market,” EPI said in a statement in the Yahoo Finance story.
Daily Jefferson County Union
July 12, 2019
Plus, as the Economic Policy Institute explains, with substantial turnover in the low-wage job market, most of those 1.3 million would cycle through to find other jobs, which by definition would pay more than they would without a higher minimum wage. If someone making $7.25 an hour, the current minimum, can only find a job half as much of the time at $15 an hour, they still come out ahead.
Nation of Change
July 12, 2019
The progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) addressed the CBO’s findings on job losses due to minimum wage increases, with EPI senior economist and director of policy Heidi Sheirholz writing that policymakers “must be skeptical” in their assessment of the study, because the CBO “failed to appropriately weight the highest quality studies in the vast academic literature on this issue.”
HR Dive
July 12, 2019
Former U.S. Labor Department chief economist Heidi Shierholz, now a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said the move would raise wages for 27 million low-wage workers, and would increase those workers’ family incomes by $22 billion annually.
Public News Service
July 12, 2019
Earlier this year, Elise Gould, a senior economist with the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that “the top 1 percent of household income has grown 229 percent since 1979, far in excess of the slower 46 percent growth—just 1.0 percent annualized growth—for the bottom 90 percent of households.”
Voice of America
July 12, 2019
The Economic Policy Institute looked at state and national income averages and places Texas 11 on the list, considerably behind the big top 3 – New York, Connecticut and Florida. “In the state of Texas you need an annual income of just over $440,000 a year, and relative to the nation that’s about $20,000 more than the national average,” says Mark Price, one of the authors of their study The New Gilded Age: Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area, and County.
740 KTRH
July 12, 2019