As cities and states across the U.S. move to increase the minimum wage, the number of employers violating the rules grows. According to the Economic Policy Institute, workers in the U.S. lose between $8.6 billion and $13.8 billion a year because they are paid below their state’s minimum wage. That estimate– which includes all workers, native-born and immigrants–was extrapolated based on a study prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor of minimum wage violations in 2011 in New York and California, two states with relatively high minimum wage requirements. The study also found that non-citizens were 1.6 to 3.1 times more likely to be affected by minimum wage violations, according to the EPI.
The Associated Press
May 19, 2017
The revived series will also need to contend with myriad cultural and political changes that have occurred in the intervening decades. “Many of these communities have been in a major period of transition both economically and demographically,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute. “For it to be culturally accurate, the series will need to depict greater diversity.”
Market Watch
May 19, 2017
If you’re working for low pay, you’re already struggling to get by. Now imagine how upset you would be if you’re not even getting the minimum wage that’s legally yours. That’s the plight of 2.4 million workers in the 10 most populous states, who are losing a total of $8 billion a year in wages, according to a new study. About 17 percent of low-wage workers are hit, and they’re losing an average of $3,300 a year, nearly one-fourth of their wages. Young workers, women, immigrants and minorities are more likely to be wage theft victims, the study says.(whole story)
Sacramento Bee
May 19, 2017
Richard Rothstein speaks With Ta-Nehisi Coates About Forgotten History
Slate/Politics and Prose
On this episode of Live at Politics and Prose, Richard Rothstein discusses his new book, The Color of Law, with Ta-Nehisi Coates
Slate
May 19, 2017
Lawrence Mishel is stepping down as president of the Economic Policy Institute. You may not have heard of him — or even of EPI — but it’s a bittersweet moment for leftist economics. Wherever the left edge of mainstream economics can be found in American politics, you will find EPI pushing the envelope. Support for a $15-an-hour minimum wage? Check. Compiling data to show that systemic injustice impoverishes minorities? Check. Arguing the economy’s output gap is far larger than most realize? Check. Rejecting the idea that inequality and a perpetual lack of good jobs is a fait accompli of automation? Check. Now, the entire team at EPI is invaluable, and you should be reading their all work. But the fact that EPI has become a bastion of the American left can’t be disentangled from Mishel’s leadership. As EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey put it: “Before the Occupy Wall Street movement or the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, there was Larry Mishel.”
The Week
May 18, 2017
‘The Color Of Law’ Details How U.S. Housing Policies Created Segregation
NPR’s All Things Considered
NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with author Richard Rothstein about his new book, The Color of Law, which details how federal housing policies in the 1940s and ’50s mandated segregation and undermined the ability of black families to own homes and build wealth.
All Things Considered
May 18, 2017
Delaware has nation’s lowest unemployment rate among African Americans
Delaware Public Media/James Morrison
The unemployment rate for African Americans in the First State was 5.8 percent in the first quarter of the year, while neighboring Pennsylvania had the nation’s highest rate at 11 percent. Janelle Jones prepared the report for the Economic Policy Institute. She said there’s probably a number of reasons why the unemployment rate is drastically different between Pennsylvania and Delaware. One is that Delaware has less black people than Pennsylvania. Another is that Pennsylvania’s large manufacturing industry has failed to recover from the recession, and a lot of African Americans were employed in these jobs. (whole story)
Delaware Public Media
May 18, 2017
More than 14 percent of Ohioans live in poverty – a situation that new research suggests could be avoided for some if they weren’t being cheated out of pay. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) examined reports of minimum-wage theft in the 10 most populous states, including Ohio. Among the states, the report found each year that 2.4 million workers are being paid less than minimum wage, amounting to more than $8 billion in lost wages annually. Report co-author David Cooper, a senior economic analyst with EPI, says nearly 1 in 5 of these workers live in poverty.
Public News Service
May 18, 2017
The Guardian
May 17, 2017
A book, an interview, an old fact, and a chart show the ongoing challenge of institutionalized racism
The Washington Post/Jared Bernstein
I just finished Richard Rothstein’s masterful new book, “The Color of Law,” on the history of explicit racial residential segregation in America, the vestiges of which remain crystal clear today. Then there’s this quick, powerful interview with Heather Ann Thompson on racial inequity and violence in the criminal justice system. (Rothstein cited throughout)
The Washington Post
May 17, 2017