“Nothing has happened that would deter companies from taking this action,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. Costa said there have been attempts to reform the H-1B visa program. The Department of Labor and Department of Justice investigated Southern California Edison for the use of H-1B visas, but neither found wrongdoing. Costa says those findings are disputable, adding that they encourage companies to outsource with the H-1B. “It’s about the bottom line,” Costa said, “and if companies can do it, they will do it. If the legal framework continues to allow it, then it will continue to happen.”
KQED
February 10, 2017
One key role they play is to allow higher-cost regions to adopt minimum wages that better match their costs of living. Maryland’s D.C. suburbs are among the nation’s most expensive places to live, with living costs comparable to New York, San Francisco and Seattle. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 2014, a single worker without family responsibilities living in the D.C. suburbs needs to earn at least $20 per hour on a full-time basis just to make ends meet. Parents need significantly more.
The Washington Post
February 10, 2017
Washington Post
February 10, 2017
“The Kansas case certainly helps to push back on the argument that when you have these supply-side tax cuts, they pay for themselves,” said Hunter Blair, a budget analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. “You’re going to blow a hole in your budget. … Kansas is a good example of that.”
McClatchy
February 9, 2017
Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the measure was in line with efforts by conservative lawmakers to overrule minimum-wage increases adopted by cities and push for lower wages for construction workers on state projects.
Reuters
February 9, 2017
Allegretto’s research with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found in 2014 that in states where the tipped wage is $2.13, the poverty rate was 14.5 percent for all tipped workers and 18 percent for waiters and bartenders, compared with 7 percent for non-tipped employees.
FiveThirtyEight
February 8, 2017
That’s a sentiment that many Americans share, regardless of their political leanings. Average CEO pay for the biggest companies surged almost 1,000 percent from 1978 to 2014, compared with just 10.9 percent for the typical worker, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
CBS News
February 8, 2017
Pay for chief executives has even outpaced other top earners. In 1989, CEOs as a group made 2.63 times as much as what people in the top 0.1 percent of earners made; by 2014 they made 5.61 times as much. That indicates, according to the progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI), that sky-high CEO pay doesn’t just reflect greater rewards for greater talent and productivity at the top, but instead shows that CEOs have been empowered to demand ever-higher pay despite their performance. Indeed, compensation for the highest-paid CEOs bears no relationship to their companies’ profitability, revenue, or stock return; many of them instead oversee the worst results. “Consequently, if CEOs earned less or were taxed more, there would be no adverse impact on output or employment,” EPI concludes.
Think Progress
February 8, 2017
“It’s hard to avoid the fox-guarding-the-henhouse analogy,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist in the Obama Labor Department, about Puzder. “His anti-labor positions disqualify him from running the department.”
CBS News
February 8, 2017
American companies dealing with outsourcing firms in turn save money on labor costs. Daniel Costa, who researches immigration law and policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, calls H-1B visas a “useful tool for corporate exploitation.” Costa pointed to a lawsuit from last year in which former Disney IT workers accused the company of maneuvering to replace them with cheaper, temporary immigrant labor. The former employees alleged that the company told them they would have to train their replacements — and keep quiet about it, or risk not getting unemployment benefits. A federal judge threw out the case last October.
Vice News
February 7, 2017