The move comes as the department steps up its enforcement of classification rules. Last year, it forced companies to pay $79 million in back wages to 109,000 workers in the janitorial, temporary help, food services, day care and hotel industries. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think-tank, estimates that 10 percent to 20 percent of employers misclassify at least one worker.
Associated Press
July 16, 2015
In a 2005 report, Laura Powers and Ann Markusen of the Economic Policy Institute analyzed the effectiveness of retraining and job placement efforts for defense industry workers as the Cold War faded. “We estimate,” they wrote, “that a majority of the workers displaced … between 1987 and 1997 now work at jobs that pay them less than their former wages and that fail to take advantage of their defense-bred skills, and a sizable minority has experienced a drop in earnings of 50% or more.”
Los Angeles Times
July 16, 2015
A report published in June by the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented think tank based in Washington, said the practice of subcontracting work to companies that, in turn, also subcontract has apparently made it easier for misclassification to occur.
The Chicago Tribune
July 16, 2015
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that wages in the middle of the distribution have increased by all of 6 percent since 1979.
The New York Times
July 15, 2015
Adjusted for inflation, the income of a typical household in 2013 was 8 per cent below levels before the most recent recession, prompting calls for the Fed to be wary of squashing wage growth. Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said: “It is imperative that policy encourages an economy where workers actually see improvements in their pay.”
Financial Times
July 15, 2015
Of course, this white flight overlapped with the flight of Big Auto. “White Detroiters followed the auto industry out of the city because the good jobs moved there, because land was plentiful in the suburbs, housing and schools were newly built, and because they wanted to get away from their black neighbors and buy homes in the racially segregated suburbs,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in 2014. “When overcrowding and an immigration of blacks threatened the racial segregation of Detroit’s neighborhoods, whites picked up and left.”
Quartz
July 15, 2015
She described the “bargain” as follows: “If you work hard and do your part, you should be able to get ahead. And when you get ahead, America gets ahead. But over the past several decades, that bargain has eroded.” Mrs. Clinton’s campaign tweeted a chart to illustrate the point. The source is the Economic Policy Institute, a left-liberal think tank affiliated with Big Labor. The fever chart shows labor productivity rising by 240.4% between 1948 and 2014. During the same period according to the chart, “hourly compensation” grew by 108.3%. The Clinton campaign version of the chart doesn’t define the terms, but we tracked down an earlier version, in an EPI report from last year. The “hourly compensation” figures are not for all workers but for “production/nonsupervisory workers in the private sector.” Private-sector managers and all government employees are left out. The productivity figures, on the other hand, are for the entire U.S. economy, making this something of an apples-and-oranges comparison.
Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2015
Clinton, for example, called for increasing the minimum wage from its current $7.25. But the core debate within the party is by how much to increase the wage, as some liberals are urging a surge to $15 an hour. “I can’t say I’m persuaded that some of the things Clinton mentions are the important drivers of getting us to full employment in a year or two: for example, business tax reform, eliminating red tape, or immigration reform are items which, at best, could be on a long-term growth agenda.,” said Larry Mishel, head of the liberal-learning Economic Policy Institute. “A burst of public investment, which she mentions, is the more likely tool to get us to full employment.”
NBC News
July 14, 2015
Larry Mishel, head of the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said that he had hoped to hear a pitch from Clinton for reining in the financial sector even more. “I would have liked to see policies which shrunk the financial sector and restrained their pay, along with efforts to restrain executive pay. We won’t be able to raise the middle if the bulk of the income is grabbed by the top,” he said.
NBC News
July 14, 2015
The speech marks a decisive break from the technocratic triangulation of her husband’s administration. As Lawrence Mishel points out at the Economic Policy Institute, it was notable that Clinton didn’t propose market-based solutions for wage stagnation, which she defined as the central economic challenge of our time.
The Nation
July 14, 2015