The average income of the top 1 percent of people in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area, which consists of all of Fairfield County plus a few towns in neighboring New Haven County, is $6 million dollars—73 times the average of the bottom 99 percent—according to a report released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in June. This makes the area one of the most unequal in the country; nationally, the top 1 percent makes 25 times more than the average of the bottom 99 percent.
The Atlantic
September 23, 2016
The recently released Census Bureau numbers show that finally, after almost a decade of recession and an uneven recovery, America is heading in the right economic direction. Overall, incomes are up, and poverty rates are lower. Butnot everyone shares those gains equally. Black workers have been left behind. In fact, the difference between their hourly wages compared to white workers is wider than it was back in 1979, a new report by the Economic Policy Institute finds.
CityLab
September 22, 2016
Back in 1979, white Americans earned an average hourly real wage of $19.62 compared to $16.07 for blacks, making for an 18.1 percent wage gap. While the gap narrowed in the late 1990s, it began to expand again in 2000. According to new research by the Economic Policy Institute, in 2015, the racial wage gap stood at 26.7 percent, with whites taking home an hourly real wage of $25.22 on average, compared to $18.49 for blacks. The gap is especially wide for young black women and black male college graduates, both of whom trail their white counterparts’ earnings by a significant distance
Forbes
September 22, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute has released a new study on the growing pay gap between white and African-American workers. Right now, African-American men make 22 percent less than their white peers. African-American women make 34 percent less. The study looks at wages from 1979 to 2015. It reaches some surprising conclusions. For example, among African-Americans with a degree: “College graduates actually saw their gap widen more than any other educational group over this period of time,” said study co-author Valerie Wilson.
Marketplace
September 21, 2016
Black workers in the United States have dropped further behind white people in wages over the past four decades, largely because of racial discrimination in the labor market, according to a study released on Tuesday.The growing wage gap represents a stubborn disparity that researchers with the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute said should receive closer attention from government officials.
Reuters
September 21, 2016
A new report released by the left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute revealed that the wage gap between black and white Americans was even greater in 2015 than it was in 1979.
Valerie Wilson, an author on the report and EPI’s program director on race, ethnicity, and the economy, told The Guardian, “The finding that stands out the most, our major result, is that the racial wage gaps were larger in 2015 than they were in 1979. That’s huge because the impression people have, in general, is we know there’s still racism in this country, but we think or at least believe that it’s getting better.”NeNew
New York Magazine
September 21, 2016
Advocates for the overtime overhaul were quick to criticize the lawsuits. Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said sarcastically the salary standard also had been raised in the past by “other communists like George W. Bush and Gerald Ford.” “It’s remarkable that somehow they think it’s an overreach,” he said. “But it’s not an overreach when an employer asks a $25,000-a-year employee to work 20 hours of overtime for free?”
Dallas Morning News
September 21, 2016
U.S. businesses have amassed an overseas cash hoard of $2.4 trillion because they aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, according to two think tanks. But that view is at odds with how Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump and fiscal conservatives see it. They say the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and Americans for Tax Fairness argue that U.S. corporate profits are at record highs while business tax revenue as a share of GDP is at record lows. Businesses can take advantage of loopholes to lower their bills to Uncle Sam, including one that enables them to indefinitely postpone the payment of taxes on profits earned overseas. The think tanks estimate that this strategy costs the U.S. Treasury about $126 billion a year in lost revenue.
CBS Moneywatch
September 21, 2016
“It seems like a cruel irony at best that most of the stuff that isn’t dropping in price is the important stuff,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning economic think tank. “In this overall discussion, you do worry that people will put too much moral freight that if someone has a flat screen TV, that they can’t be really poor.” On the other hand, Bivens noted that lower costs for things like refrigerators and TVs free up more cash for households to spend on other parts of their budgets. The sharp decrease in the price of consumer goods is “one of the few good news stories of our economy,” he added.cc
CBS Moneywatch
September 20, 2016
The estimated total cash held offshore rose by nearly $200 billion last year, to some $2.4 trillion, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute and an affiliated group, Americans for Tax Fairness. Roughly half of that cash is held by companies in the information technology and health-care industries, the group said.
CNBC
September 20, 2016