Critics of the UW team’s methodology point out that there are other forces driving differences between labor markets in Seattle and the rest of Washington besides the minimum-wage increases during the study period — namely, the rapid growth of the city and rising costs for just about everything. “In reality, Seattle’s economic boom simply meant that low-wage jobs were converted into higher-wage jobs,” not that there are fewer job opportunities, wrote Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which focuses on the impacts on low- and middle-income people of a broad range of policies. He pointed out other shortcomings, including the study’s omission of workers at businesses with more than one location, such as chain restaurants, because of limitations in the state employment data the UW used.
The Seattle Times
October 24, 2018
In a blog for the Economic Policy Institute on Monday, Zipperer said that he thinks even the new study has flaws:
By comparing workers in Seattle with workers elsewhere in Washington state, the study incorrectly assumes that the low-wage labor market in Seattle would have grown like other areas in Washington, were it not for the city’s 2015-2016 minimum wage increases. This comparison is unreasonable because, as other researchers have demonstrated (Dube 2017, Rothstein and Schanzenbach 2017, Zipperer and Schmitt 2017), Seattle experienced much faster wage gains for reasons that had nothing to do with the minimum wage. Indeed, the authors of the new study find that Seattle had faster wage growth and diverged from other regions prior to the city’s minimum wage increases.
Splinter News
October 24, 2018
However, some experts were critical of the study, saying some of its methodology and assumptions were problematic. For example, the Seattle study excludes newly entering workers employed by chain businesses, which account for more than a third of low-wage employment in Washington State, which officials at the Economic Policy Institute said was a critical omission. ‘At the same time, if you believe the findings of the study for these workers who already have jobs at the time of the minimum wage increase, all of them seem to be benefitting,’ EPI Economist Ben Zipperer told DailyMail.com. ‘Even the low-hours group (of workers) are making the same amount of money but working fewer hours.’
The Daily Mail
October 24, 2018
Other researchers were more skeptical. When last year’s study came out, Ben Zipperer, an expert on the minimum wage at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that it failed to adequately account for the fact that Seattle’s economy was growing rapidly when the minimum wage increases took effect. In a booming economy, Mr. Zipperer argued, we would expect to see fewer workers employed at low wages — not because employers decide it’s not worth hiring people, but because the competition for workers bids up wages, and many low-paying jobs disappear and are replaced by somewhat higher-paying jobs. (Ben quoted throughout)
The New York Times
October 22, 2018
The typical American family has increased its child-care spending by 70% since 1995, according to the U.S. Education Department. Those costs ballooned to a total of $4.9 billion in 2016, which is bad news for women, who tend to shoulder more child-care-related responsibilities and housework than their male partners. Economists say mothers are more likely than fathers to drop down to part-time work or leave the labor force altogether when child care gets pricey. “It just limits their choices,” says Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, adding that women tend to make less money than their male partners, which can push them to be the ones to opt out. (EPI cited throughout)
The Wall Street Journal
October 22, 2018
The 1% has never had it so good. The average wage for the 1% of income earners hit $719,000 per year in 2017, up 3.7% on the year, exceeding their peak of $716,000 per year just before the Great Recession, according to a report released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive, nonprofit think tank, citing data from the Social Security Administration. The average wage for the top 0.1% reached $2.7 million in 2017, the second-highest level ever, just 4% below their level in 2007. However, wages for the 0.1% rose 8% on the year in 2017. (whole story)
MarketWatch
October 19, 2018
The U.S. health care system has gotten itself into a bit of a vicious cycle, says the Economic Policy Institute, in which all these health care costs are keeping us from putting money back into the rest of the economy. The Economic Policy Institute recommends policymakers stop trying to restrict health care use through implementing a single-payer system and focus on controlling health care prices, which the EPI says is really what’s getting out of control.
Bustle
October 18, 2018
What are America’s shifting politics around trade going to mean for the upcoming midterm elections? What lessons from the passage of NAFTA – and approximately 25 years of living with it – can advocates for American manufacturing and workers apply to its proposed replacement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement? Those were the among the topics of discussion today at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, where an expert panel unpacked the politics and policy influencing our dynamic nationwide trade debate. (whole story)
Alliance for American Manufacturing
October 18, 2018
Employers cover the majority of this expense, but people end up paying for the benefit in different ways as rates continue to rise: The expense is passed along through higher cost sharing for visits and hospitalizations, and more of their compensation is coming in the form of health insurance instead of wages. “Rapid growth in the cost of US health care has put sustained downward pressure on wages and incomes,” a new report by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal nonprofit, found.
Buzzfeed
October 16, 2018
It’s not news that health care costs have been rising for years, but a new report from Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute puts some eye-opening numbers on just how much the rising price of health care has cost American workers.
Fiscal Times
October 16, 2018