“You’ve got a lot of people who seem to work for firms that, in the aggregate, seem to be doing really well,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “They’re very profitable, and yet [workers’] wages aren’t growing particularly fast relative to how fast the firms are growing.”
CBS Moneywatch
July 13, 2026
The picture is further complicated by research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which found that young workers without college educations are experiencing similar increases in unemployment over the same period. This makes it difficult to pin the slump on AI alone.
Straight Arrow News
July 13, 2026
But Kuttner understood that changing policy first required changing politics, which meant first and foremost finding a counterweight to the right’s new intellectual edifice.
That was very much what Kuttner and some of his fellow policy entrepreneurs had in mind when they established the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank dedicated to restoring the kind of broadly shared prosperity Kuttner got to experience but that succeeding generations have not. EPI remains highly influential today. Its research is cited regularly even by analysts and groups who may not share the organization’s worldview but depend on it for insights into the realities of life for low- and middle-income Americans. It was also the longtime home of Jared Bernstein, who became the Chair of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Democracy Journal
July 13, 2026
“We won’t get the inflation data for June until July 14, but recent price data suggest year over year real wages likely fell in June,” Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a social media post. “Workers and their families are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet and real wages are most surely now below where they were in January 2025.”
The unemployment rate held fairly steady at 4.2%, down from three straight months of 4.3%. The unemployment rate has stayed between 4% and 4.5% since the beginning of last year.
Gould said the unemployment rate ticked down “for the wrong reasons,” as labor force participation fell by 720,000 and employment fell by 507,000. Even the prime-age employment-to-population ratio, which had remained resilient, fell in June.
Sinclair Broadcast Group
July 13, 2026
Of particular concern: The labor force participation rate for those in their prime working years fell to 83.3% in June, suggesting the trend wasn’t driven solely by people aging out of the workforce.
“What mechanically happens is that the unemployment rate has fallen a little bit and people will think, ‘Oh, that’s a good thing,’” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “But it fell for the wrong reasons. It fell because so many people left the labor force — maybe they didn’t think there were going to be jobs for them.”
Yahoo Finance
July 13, 2026
Valerie Wilson, an economist at the think tank Economic Policy Institute, told the Washington Post that Trump’s directives are turning “the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect.”
SF Gate
July 13, 2026
Perhaps more strikingly, it found that median wages for 84.5% of all jobs in the Buckeye State pay less than the estimated cost of living for a family of three. In the Canton/Massillon area, annual cost of living is about $81,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.
Ohio Capital Journal
July 13, 2026
The minimum wage is going up in 17 states and localities July 1, but Nevada isn’t one of them.
With one or two exceptions, this summer’s minimum wage increases across the country are the result of statutes or ordinances by which the wage is adjusted each year for inflation, according to tracking by the Economic Policy Institute.
Nevada Current
July 13, 2026
“People’s purchasing power has diminished,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “That’s not only harmful to workers and their family’s ability to afford their basic necessities, but that means less demand for goods and services, which is what drives the economy.”
The Washington Post
July 13, 2026
So what’s driven the decline in work among teens?
“This is a decision of labor supply,” said economist Hilary Wething at the Economic Policy Institute. “Fewer teens are looking to participate in the workforce. For 18- and 19-year-olds, the share enrolled in high school or college grew from about 45% in 1984 to 63% in 2025. That’s a pretty big jump. They just have more competing priorities than previous generations: extracurriculars, college prep, academic programs, internships.”
Marketplace
July 13, 2026