Annually, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services awards 65,000 visas through a lottery process, and exempts up to an additional 20,000 foreign nationals who hold master’s degrees or higher. In 2013, at least 460,000 workers entered the U.S. on an H-1B visa, according to the Economic Policy Institute, an independent think tank.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
April 19, 2017
Here’s another thing that’s out of balance: the rate of corporate profit growth in relation to wage and employment growth. The Economic Policy Institute’s 2015 study of wage stagnation shows that productivity grew 74% between 1973 and 2013 for hourly workers, while compensation grew just 9%.
Detroit Free Press
April 19, 2017
The boost in babysitting wages means sitters are inching up on the typical worker. Americans’ median hourly wage stood at $17.86 in 2016, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Of course, most full-time workers also receive some benefits with their job, which isn’t common for babysitters.
CBS Moneywatch
April 19, 2017
Ron Hira, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute and an H-1B visa expert who teaches public policy at Howard University, called Trump’s executive order a “step in the right direction” but it remains to be seen whether it “dislodges the stalemate that’s in Congress right now.”
The Washington Post
April 18, 2017
“The H-1B visa program is commonly discussed as being for when employers have a labor shortage,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “The reality of it is that employers are not required to recruit and try to hire U.S. workers before they hire an H-1B worker.” The government issues 85,000 H-1B visas annually. In recent years, many of those visas have been snapped up by outsourcing firms that offer low-cost IT support to American corporations. “A very big share of the visas are actually going to IT outsourcing companies,” Costa said. “We do know that many of the companies that have this business model are the ones that are paying the lowest wages to H-1Bs.”
NPR
April 18, 2017
“Literally, this is a complete and total fraud,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. “[The bill] doesn’t give any new rights to workers that they don’t have now. But it does give new rights to employers, including the right to not pay overtime in the week that it’s worked.”… The Working Families Flexibility Act would open up yet another front on which employers could stiff their workers by failing to allow workers to use their comp time when requested, or not keeping accurate records of accrued hours, and so on. “Think of yourself, working for Walmart and having 100 hours in the bank. How do you prove it?” Eisenbrey says. “People have enough trouble with wage theft now with employers undercounting hours. This is just one additional way to make it possible for employers to cheat workers.”
The American Prospect
April 18, 2017
That trend is already showing up in data compiled by Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think-tank. According to senior economist Rob Scott, not only did America lose 85,000 factories, or 23.5 percent of the total, from 1997 to 2014, but the average number of workers in a U.S. factory declined 14 percent to 44 in 2014 from 1997. According to Scott, much of the decline in workers was due to automation.
Reuters
April 17, 2017
OSHA estimated that the reforms would have a net benefit of $7.7 billion each year, largely due to savings on health care and lost productivity. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, calls the silica rule a “case study” in how seemingly expensive safety regulations can have economic benefits over the long term.
The Huffington Post
April 16, 2017
Men begin outearning women almost immediately upon entering the workforce, even if they share the same college major or occupation. In 2016, degree-holding men age 21 to 24 earned $20.94 an hour on average, compared with $16.58 for women, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That gap widens if managers use past pay to set future salaries, advocates of the new laws say, which is why employers should set clearer pay expectations for the specific role.
Wall Street Journal
April 15, 2017
Trump’s executive order, and a second one that focuses on uncollected import duties, could produce a few “tweetable” wins, but won’t fix the trade deficit, Robert E. Scott writes for the Economic Policy Institute…In 2015, those six countries – China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands and Taiwan – had current account balances totaling nearly $1.3 trillion, according to Scott’s analysis.
Sacramento Bee
April 14, 2017