The rule proposed by Labor last summer would raise that threshold to $50,440. However, law firms and worker advocacy groups say the final version lowers the proposed threshold slightly to $47,000. Still, about 5 million salaried workers are expected to be newly eligible for overtime. The rule, which likely would take effect in two to three months, also is expected to include a mechanism to raise the threshold annually. “It represents a significant step forward in the effort to boost wages for working people,” says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
May 17, 2016
However, some legal experts say the final version of the regulation likely places the threshold closer to a salary of $47,000—meaning that 5 million salaried workers are expected to be eligible for overtime under the rule. The change would most directly affect the service industry, particularly workers in hotels and restaurants, Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clarkson University, told Marketplace. “It represents a significant step forward in the effort to boost wages for working people,” Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, told USA Today.
Time
May 17, 2016
This year’s high school graduates were 10 years old when the economy hit the skids in 2008. Many college graduates in the class of 2016 were 14. Yet, their economic prospects remain darkened by the enduring effects of the Great Recession. That is not to say there has been no improvement. The class of ’16 has more and better-paying job opportunities than earlier post-crash graduating classes, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. But for the most part, today’s graduates still face employment conditions that are worse than in 2007, the year before the recession, and are much worse than in 2000, when the economy was last at full employment.
The New York Times
May 16, 2016
Maine faced a potential crisis. The Pine Tree state already had suffered the decline of its traditional manufacturing industries, lumber and paper, victims of advances in technology and foreign competition. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute estimated that cheap exports of Chinese goods cost Maine 11,400 jobs, or nearly 2 percent of total state employment, between 2001 and 2013.
The Washington Post
May 16, 2016
About 20 percent of the previous graduating class continued their education the fall after graduating. Nationally, about 26 percent of college graduates holding bachelor’s degrees ages 21 to 24 were enrolled in graduate school, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Hartford Courant
May 16, 2016
A leading advocate of the parasite economy is the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA), which has worked assiduously to keep wages low. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers, unchanged since 1991, is a shocking $2.13 an hour. Lest you think all those workers are raking in tips, as a small elite of servers in high-end urban restaurants do, the median hourly wage for restaurant servers, including tips, is just $9.25 per hour. Tipped workers are more than twice as likely as the average worker to fall under the federal poverty line, and restaurant servers nearly three times as likely, according to a 2011 study by the Economic Policy Institute.
Today, a majority of the money we collectively spend on anti-poverty programs doesn’t go to the jobless, it goes to the working poor. According to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, 69.2 percent of all public benefits go to non-elderly households with at least one working member, nearly half of whom work at least full-time.
The American Prospect
May 16, 2016
According to a recent report by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, women who work full-time earn nearly $11,000 less per year than men, which adds up to almost half a million dollars over the course of a career. Women earn 79 percent of what a man earns. For younger women, the outlook is especially bleak. An April report released by the Economic Policy Institute states that gender wage inequality has grown since 2000. Recent female college graduates earned 6.8 percent less than in 2000, but recent male college graduates earned 8.1 more.
Forbes
May 16, 2016
The Washington Post
May 16, 2016
The report also notes that a majority of those between the ages of 24 and 29 do not have a college degree—about 66%. “Access to good jobs for these individuals is especially critical, as stable employment allows them to build a career or pay for further schooling,” according to the report from the Economic Policy Institute.
U.S. News & World Report
May 16, 2016
U.S. News & World Report
May 16, 2016