The other big topic is regulations. Trump and the GOP have managed to fight, stall, or roll back a host of rules. They’re making it easier for employers to run unsafe workplaces, and are trying to make it easier for restaurant owners to steal workers’ tips. They’re making it harder for workers to claim overtime pay, or to sure their employers for violations. All of these changes will lower Americans’ pay and worsen their work conditions in coming years, while making their lives less financially secure and more chaotic. (Also links to nominal wage tracker)
The Week
January 31, 2018
It’s easier to demonize people — especially foreigners — than machines, the children of invention. What’s more, imports from countries with cheaper labor, weaker worker protections and threadbare environmental standards will be seen as unfair. Thea Lee, a former deputy chief of staff of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who now heads the Economic Policy Institute, notes that workers’ anger is directed against “the particular set of rules about globalization that we chose,” which spreads benefits among financiers and corporations while disregarding workers.
The New York Times
January 30, 2018
“There are three major indicators of economic well-being by which we commonly measure racial economic inequality—median hourly wage, median household income and median family net worth or wealth,” wrote Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, earlier this month. “If taken alone, each of these measures might lead you to draw dramatically different conclusions about the current state of racial economic inequality.” (Valerie quoted throughout)
CBS News Moneywatch
January 30, 2018
“He’s reaping the rewards for staying the course of sound decisions made by the Obama administration,” Janelle Jones, an economic analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me Monday during a phone interview. “There’s nothing in [Trump’s] policies that have led to a quick turnaround in black unemployment over the past 12 months.” (Janelle quoted throughout)
Think Progress
January 30, 2018
Federal regulations save the government more than $100 billion per year, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. A new report that reviews the Trump administration’s de-regulatory agenda cites OMB data from 2009 to 2015 for the claim. “The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have been successful in repealing many existing regulations and making it more difficult for government agencies to effectively regulate industries,” the researchers write. The report argues that regulations “have a modestly positive or neutral effect on employment” by creating jobs in new fields. “Factories making lead paint shut down after regulations banning lead paint were issued in the late 1970s, but enterprises manufacturing lead-free alternatives arose in their place,” the report says.
Politico Pro
January 30, 2018
This is not, incidentally, because an increase in the labor supply has no adverse effects for anyone. Rather, as Heidi Shierholz of the liberal Economic Policy Institute emphasizes in her overview of the literature, it’s that “earlier immigrants are the group that’s most adversely affected by immigration” because they are the people whose skill sets are most likely to put them in direct competition with new immigrants. Across a range of estimates, the effects on wages “tend to be very small, and on average, modestly positive.”
VOX
January 30, 2018
As the Economic Policy Institute reports, 76 percent of the increase in union membership in 2017 was workers under 35 years old, even though this group accounts for less than 40 percent of total employment. But this attitude reflects their work experience, not their entitlement. Millennials earn 20 percent less than boomers did at the same age. Far more of these individuals work in “pink-collar” sectors—education and health care, sectors that have doubled in size since 1990 and which contain the country’s most militant unions—than in the niche digital-media sector that often draws attention. In truth, this is a story about how the erosion of working conditions is leading student debt-saddled employees to identify with the working rather than the managerial class. (EPI cited throughout)
The Nation
January 30, 2018
More than 75 percent of new union members last year were young workers, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis released today. Unions added 256,000 new members in 2017, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Of those 198,000 were under 35. Meanwhile, unions lost 75,000 middle-aged workers between 45 and 54 years old. Still, the vast majority of young workers are not members of a union. In 2017, 7.7 percent of workers younger than 35 belonged to a union, compared to 12.6 percent of older workers.
Politico Pro
January 26, 2018
But a recent analysis performed by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) raises concerns over whether employers will actually do this and suggests that the new rule will result in workers losing $5.8 billion in tips, as tips are shifted from workers to employers. The EPI analysis also suggests that women will bear the brunt of this rule change.
Quartz
January 25, 2018
The percentage of nonunion, private-sector employees covered by the mandatory-arbitration clauses has more than doubled since the early 2000s, according to a 2017 study by a Cornell University professor and sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.
The Wall Street Journal
January 25, 2018
