While performers and celebrity get all of the headlines, very few make as much as America’s top corporate CEOs. Bloomberg recently reported that the average salary for the top 132 CEOs in the United States is $12.4 million a year. The Economic Policy Institute estimate that CEO pay is 312 times more than the average of their employees.
Coachella Valley Weekly
April 26, 2019
In a state-by-state breakdown of unemployment rates by race and ethnicity for the fourth quarter of 2018, Valerie Wilson, Director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, shows that while there have been nationwide improvements in prospects for black and Hispanic workers, their unemployment rates remain high relative to white workers in almost every state.
The Charleston Chronicle
April 26, 2019
Methodology: The effective minimum wage is the binding federal, state or local minimum wage weighted by the usual labor hours of minimum wage workers at nonfarm wage and salary jobs paid hourly. It includes all federal and state laws as well as 32 localities with separate ordinances whose geography we can identify in the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group. We exclude tipped occupations from this calculation using the definitions used by the Economic Policy Institute. We calculate median overall wages and average hourly earnings in the C.P.S. to be conceptually similar to average hourly earnings in the Current Employment Statistics survey. Inflation-adjusted series use the chained C.P.I.-U deflator, which is extended before 2000 using the deflator for personal consumption expenditures. This analysis uses data on local minimum wage ordinances from the U.C. Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education as well as from Kavya Vaghul and Ben Zipperer.
New York Times
April 26, 2019
More than 700,000 jobs were lost as a result of NAFTA according to the Economic Policy Institute. These job losses weren’t spread out across the country, but hit the hardest in states where manufacturing was concentrated, such as Michigan.
The Daily Caller
April 26, 2019
The country’s severe shortage of qualified public elementary and secondary school teachers, which a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report details, demonstrates states’ need to raise adequate revenue not only to boost teacher pay but also to provide the resources that high-quality schools require.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
April 26, 2019
It’s not just striking and protesting teachers who insist that they are underpaid. Across the political spectrum, researchers agree that teachers earn lower salaries than workers with similar educational backgrounds. The Economic Policy Institute calls the discrepancy a “teacher pay penalty” and pegs it at more than 18%, noting that even with more generous public employee benefits, the total compensation gap is still 11% — a record high. Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution and two colleagues
The Eagle
April 26, 2019
There remains a supply gap of about 110,000 teachers nationwide as of last school year, primarily because more teachers are quitting or switching schools, and fewer people are entering the profession. Emma García coauthored the report from the Economic Policy Institute. She said a lot of the problems could be fixed with more investment to raise salaries, lower classroom sizes and better fund schools overall.
El Semanario
April 26, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost for full-time childcare can range anywhere from $4,000 to $22,600 per year—far out of reach for most American families. A serious proposal—say, Elizabeth Warren’s actual plan to provide parents with affordable (and depending on your income, free) childcare by taxing the wealthiest Americans—must tackle the rising costs of childcare, at a time when wages are stagnant. (Warren’s proposal, in contrast to Ivanka’s, would cost about $70 billion per year.)
Jezebel
April 26, 2019
Arbitration cases have taken on increased significance in recent years because of added attention to worker disputes over sexual harassment in the workplace. A 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found that the share of workers subject to forced arbitration agreements has doubled in recent decades and now includes more than half the country’s workforce.
CNBC
April 26, 2019
More than half of U.S. workers have been forced to sign contracts with arbitration clauses, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. In private arbitration, the deck is stacked against the worker: The employer sets the rules and likely chooses the arbitrator. Studies show that workers win less frequently and receive lower awards in arbitration. Arbitrators report feeling pressure to rule in favor of the company that hired them. One study by the Social Science Research Network estimates that when workers sign forced arbitration clauses, 98 percent of legal claims that would’ve been brought in court never see the light of day. Forced arbitration makes it easier for unscrupulous corporations to get away with wage theft, sexual harassment and other misconduct.
Oregon Live
April 26, 2019