Others are not so sure. Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute thinks wage losses in low-paid, hard-hit sectors, like food services, may have temporarily pulled the overall wage average up: “It’s clear that we are still not at genuine full employment, and the Federal Reserve should keep interest rates low until we are.”
Quartz
October 10, 2017
It’s the explicit goal of monetary policy to maintain a certain level of unemployment to control inflation. If the national unemployment rate gets low enough, the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, which literally throws people out of work to slow inflation down. Our lawmakers’ devotion to austerity, which also sucks spending out of the economy, vastly compounds the problem. Even at the peaks of recent business cycles, we’ve had more people looking for work than available job openings.
The Week
October 10, 2017
Now, many large employers — from tech giants to retail and restaurant chains — include prohibitions on collective workplace arbitrations. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that about 60 million American workers are covered by such agreements, and as many as 25 million of them cannot arbitrate collectively.
NPR Morning Edition
October 6, 2017
Polis cited a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute that found 2.4 million workers in the 10 most populous states lost $8 billion annually for minimum wage violations alone. “Clearly there’s not enough incentive already for employers to follow our existing law,” he said. “The last thing we need is another loophole to avoid the law.”
The Hill
October 5, 2017
The practice of forcing employees to sign arbitration agreements is increasingly widespread. A study released Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that in 1992, approximately 2% of private sector, non-unionized employees in the United States had signed a forced arbitration agreement. Today, that percentage is 55%. As a result, the EPI estimates that over 60 million American workers are working under such agreements.
Medium
October 5, 2017
4) Provide universal public day care to all who want it, and build a national high-speed rail system.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a program guaranteeing every American child access to a high-quality day care or prekindergarten would cost roughly $90 billion in its first year of operation. Costs would go down once the new child-care infrastructure was put together, but let’s say it would cost $900 billion to maintain for a decade. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, building a national high-speed rail system would cost $500 billion.
New York Magazine
October 4, 2017
In an Economic Policy Institute report, Alexander J.S. Colvin explains that the share of employees subject to mandatory arbitration increased from just 2 percent in 1992 to more than a quarter of all workers by the early 2000s. Now, more than half of non-union private-sector employees are covered by such agreements. Of companies with more than 1,000 employees, 65 percent of workers are covered by mandatory arbitration. Of all private-sector arbitration clauses, 30 percent—covering about 25 million workers—explicitly state that employees must waive their right to join a class-action case.
The American Prospect
October 4, 2017
According to new data published last month by the Economic Policy Institute, 56.3 percent of non-union private-sector employees are currently subject to mandatory-arbitration agreements, and of those, 41.1 percent have also waived their right to a class-action claim. Put simply, an estimated 24.7 million American workers have been barred from bringing a class-action claim to defend their employment rights.
The Nation
October 4, 2017
The case, Epic Systems Corporation versus Lewis, involves arbitration agreements often found in the fine print of employee contracts. About one-quarter of private-sector employees, or nearly 25 million Americans, have signed agreements that waive their right to sue employers collectively, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Public News Service
October 4, 2017
The Supreme Court opened a new term Monday, hearing arguments in a case that could expand the rights of millions of workers to sue their employers. The case, NLRB v. Murphy Oil, pits workers who want the right to join class action lawsuits against employers—backed by the Trump administration—who want to force workers to enter into binding arbitration agreements that prohibit collective litigation. The Economic Policy Institute says more than half of all non-union U.S. workers are currently forced to work under mandatory arbitration rules.
Democracy Now!
October 4, 2017