This week on Off-Kilter… From time to time, policymakers muse about whether the federal minimum wage should be set by region rather than as a national floor. Now is one of those times, with some in Congress pointing to a regional minimum wage as an alternative to the $15 federal floor called for in the popular Raise the Wage Act. But how would a regional minimum wage play out — particularly for workers? To unpack what’s at stake, Rebecca talks with David Cooper, senior analyst at the Economic Policy Institute and deputy director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network.
Medium
April 30, 2019
We should note that the federal minimum wage is sometimes exceeded by a state or local minimum wage, as 29 states and the District of Columbia have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. The handy minimum wage tracker maintained by the Economic Policy Institute shows, for instance, that the state minimum wage in New York is $11.10 and the tipped wage is $7.50; in New York City, the minimum wage is $15 and the tipped wage is $10.
The Washington Post
April 26, 2019
According to the Economic Policy Institute, African Americans make less money than white people across the board.
22 Words
April 26, 2019
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