Another way to lessen dependency on imports, suggests Baker, is to reduce safety, environmental and labor regulations stateside, which would make it cheaper for businesses to operate and manufacture in the U.S. “This can have a slight positive effect. It’s cheaper to produce stuff if I get to throw my waste on your lawn, but it is not a long-term way to reverse the trade deficit,” he adds. Of course, small businesses could shave their costs, but they may face other risks. “If a business eliminates pollution controls in the workplace, you [may] have an increase in industrial accidents,” says Robert Scott, the director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Inc.
April 7, 2017
According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the mean retirement savings of all working-age families, which the EPI defines as those between 32 and 61 years old, is $95,776. (State of American Retirement charts featured)
CNBC
April 7, 2017
Seeking more flexibility, American workers are working from home and part-time, but these jobs often come with fewer benefits. In fact, the number of Americans working involuntarily part-time rose 45% since 2007 to 6.4 million, a December 2016 report by the Economic Policy Institute found. The EPI, a nonprofit think-tank in Washington, D.C., said the increase is almost entirely due to the inability of workers to find full-time jobs, leaving many workers to take or keep lower-paying jobs with less consistent hours to make ends meet. And more than half (54%) of the growth in these involuntary part-time jobs between 2007 and 2015 were in retail, leisure and hospitality industries. There’s a prolonged “structural shift toward more intensive use of part-time employment,” the Economic Policy Institute report found. Aside from the frequent lack of sufficient work hours, these part-time workers must also “navigate unpredictable and/or variable hours,” with their work schedules varying week-to-week at a rate more than double that of full-time workers, it added. What’s more, part-time workers suffer from a lower rate of pay and benefits coverage than full-time workers, such as access to health insurance and paid time off. Compared to similar full-time workers, men working part-time earn 19% and women working part-time earn 9% per hour.
Market Watch
April 7, 2017
Black and Hispanic women are disproportionately among those who earn less than a livable wage and struggle to care for families. While tens of millions of U.S. workers might manage two or three jobs to make ends meet, black and Hispanic women see a steeper wage penalty compared with white men than white and Asian women do, according to an analysis published in March by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Mic
April 7, 2017
The H-2B program may make foreign workers vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, according to a December 2016 report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. By taking advantage of often much cheaper labor, the program also pushes down general wages for low-skilled American workers, according to Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. And the foreign workers have essentially no authority to change that.
International Business Times
April 7, 2017
A separate study from the Economic Policy Institute claimed a 60-day delay of the fiduciary rule would cost retirement savers $3.7 billion.
Fortune
April 6, 2017
Stagnant incomes are partially to blame. The earnings gap between whites and blacks has widened since 1979, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Blacks generally earn less than white workers, making it hard to save for a downpayment.
CBS Moneywatch
April 6, 2017
The victims of that largesse, as the Congressional Budget Office found, would be the 24 million Americans who would lose health-care coverage over the next ten years. Millions more would get diminished or more expensive coverage. Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute finds that the AHCA would cost Americans a staggering $33 billion just in higher deductibles and copays by 2026. Republicans claim that the ACA repeal’s built-in tax cuts—totaling roughly $70 billion in 2019 alone—will spur job growth because the cuts are mostly targeted at those almighty job creators. That’s not what the numbers show, however. As Bivens finds, repealing the ACA would reduce job growth by 1.2 million by 2019, as tens of millions of Americans are forced to spend more on health-care costs, reducing their disposable income.
The American Prospect
April 6, 2017
Meanwhile, research at the Economic Policy Institute shows that even as women climb the ladder to positions with more responsibility and higher pay, the gap widens — with men being paid even more money for the same job. “As you move up, women are not occupying places at the top the way men are,” Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute told NBC News. “The wage gap at the top is much larger than it is at the middle or the bottom.”
NBC News
April 5, 2017
Advocates are taking notice of such disparities on Equal Pay Day — Tuesday, April 4 — which represents how far into the year women have to work to catch up to the amount men earned in the previous year. Although women have been steadily catching up to men’s pay for decades, median wages still fall short of white men’s, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
VOX
April 5, 2017