Media clips
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This chart from The Economic Policy Institute illustrates the point: (Snapshot chart included). At $14.92 per hour, the median black worker currently earns just 75 percent of the $19.79 that their white counterpart earns. On the income front, the median black household is bringing down just 61 percent of the total median white household, about $39,500 versus $65,000 annually. That’s slightly improved from the gap in 1967, when the median black household earned just 55 percent of white household income. But in absolute terms, the racial income gap has grown by more than $5,000 since the year King called for “a radical redistribution of economic and political power.”
Mother Jones January 16, 2018 -
Last Thursday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published an analysis of the current status of economic equality between black and white Americans. The EPI drew income data from its own library, Census Bureau’s current population survey and the Federal Reserve Board and examined three indicators of economic wellness: median hourly wage, median household income and median family net worth. As of 2016, the latest year of data publication, the average hourly wage for black workers is $14.92, 25 percent less than that of white workers. It’s an impressive improvement compared to 50 years ago. (EPI cited throughout)
New York Observer January 16, 2018 -
The labor market is near full employment. The jobless rate is low. The economy is adding tens of thousands of jobs each month, and—at last—wages and earnings are increasing for workers at or just above the minimum wage. Indeed, Walmart on Thursday announced that it would provide a wage hike to and expand benefits for employees across the country, with 85,000 workers with two decades of seniority at the big-box retailer getting a $1,000 bonus and a million workers in total benefitting. In addition, 18 states bumped up their minimum wages for the new year, providing an estimated $5 billion more a year to 4.5 million workers, the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute has calculated.
The Atlantic January 16, 2018 -
One of the reasons that Democrats, labor unions and worker rights activists push for keeping and increasing the federal minimum wage is because it sets a floor that cannot be crossed — especially during times of economic downturn when employers are likely to reduce wages. “Over the long term when you go an extended period without raising the minimum wage — unless the market is doing reasonably well — you’ll either have wage stagnation where wages are just kind of remaining flat or they can start to decline in real terms as they did throughout much of the early years of Obama’s presidency,” said David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “Or you can run into the situation where if there’s some crisis and there is a recession and people start getting laid off. Then wages can really start to drop if there’s nothing there to catch them.” Another reasons why some push for a higher minimum wage is because it can drive up wages for other workers as well. “Minimum wage plays a role in how employers set the wages of roughly the bottom 20 percent of the workforce,” Cooper said.
Marketplace January 16, 2018 -
“Stock market gains and near-stagnant pay for most workers have the same root cause: the policy-induced shift of economic leverage and bargaining power away from typical workers and towards corporate managers and owners of capital,” says Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. There’s a laundry list of reasons for this, and if you’ve been following the recent national debate over inequality, they’re probably familiar to you: low minimum wages, the decline of unions, globalization, shifts in tax policy. (EPI mentioned throughout)
Washington Post January 11, 2018 -
So we aren’t shocked that the unemployment rate for African-Americans in Illinois is 10 percent. That’s the highest of any state, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Yes, the lagging economy in Illinois hurts millions of people — African-Americans disproportionately so.
Chicago Tribune January 10, 2018 -
But if teachers are crucial to high-quality preschool, they are also its most neglected component. Even as investment in early-childhood education soars, teachers like Kelly continue to earn as little as $28,500 a year on average, a valuation that puts them on par with file clerks and switchboard operators, but well below K-12 teachers, who, according to the most recent national survey, earn roughly $53,100 a year. According to a recent briefing from the Economic Policy Institute, a majority of preschool teachers are low-income women of color with no more than a high-school diploma. Only 15 percent of them receive employer-sponsored health insurance, and depending on which state they are in, nearly half belong to families that rely on public assistance. “Teaching preschoolers is every bit as complicated and important as teaching any of the K-12 grades, if not more so,” says Marcy Whitebook, a director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. “But we still treat preschool teachers like babysitters. We want them to ameliorate poverty even as they live in it themselves.”
The New York Times January 9, 2018 -
It’s true that 6.8 percent is historically a fairly low unemployment rate for black Americans, but it’s not a good or healthy unemployment rate by just about any measure. “If we had an overall unemployment rate of 6.8 percent, nobody would be cheering about that,” says Valerie Wilson, an economist at the left-learning Economic Policy Institute. The last time the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole was that high was about five years ago, during a period when the economic recovery had yet to take off. And while it’s true that the most recent jobs report shows that the gap has narrowed a little, its existence still points to troubling discrepancies in the labor market that can’t all be explained away by differences in education and skills. (Valerie quoted throughout)
The Atlantic January 9, 2018 -
The attack is being waged on several fronts. Among other destructive steps, Trump’s Labor Department abandoned an Obama-era rule to expand overtime pay and recently proposed a new rule that would enable employers to legally steal workers’ tips. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the rule would rob tipped employees of $5.8 billion annually. In December, the National Labor Relations Board also issued a series of pro-corporate rulings, including one that will make it more difficult for smaller groups of workers within large organizations to unionize. Meanwhile, after a year in which the number of coal miner fatalities across the country doubled, the administration is reportedly considering doing away with regulations intended to prevent miners from contracting black lung.
The Washington Post January 9, 2018 -
Video interview with Janelle on January 1, 2018 minimum wage increases.
Salon January 9, 2018