“Well, only about 1.3 million people earn the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. That’s a small number, that’s like one percent of the workforce, but of course many more people earn a little bit more than the minimum wage and half of all states have a minimum wage above the federal level, so another way to think about it, the economic policy institute says that 53.6 million workers, a third of the labor force, earns less than $15 an hour.”
Here & Now
May 3, 2016
If that happens, anyone making between $23,500 and $47,000 would automatically become eligible for overtime pay. In that case, 12.5 million workers may benefit directly, according to estimates from the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “All told, about 33% of the workforce will be eligible for overtime, regardless of their duties on the job,” EPI estimated.
CNN Money
May 3, 2016
In fact, the labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute reported in March that Indiana lost more jobs proportionally in 2015 due to the U.S. trade deficit with Pacific Rim countries than any other state except Michigan. The EPI was looking specifically at trade between the U.S. and the 11 other nations that have signed onto the impending free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The EPI also found Michigan had lost 214,600 jobs since 2011 as a result of U.S. trade deficits with those 11 countries, adding up to 5.12 percent of employment in the state. No other state came anywhere near those losses, but Indiana got closest, losing 103,800 jobs over the same period. That loss amounted to 3.54 percent of employment in the state, the institute reported.
International Business Times
May 3, 2016
The biggest difference between schools I attended a half-century ago and schools I visit now is special education: It took a while for our country to grasp how to help students with extra needs. Many were amazed when Richard Rothstein and Karen Hawley Miles of the Economic Policy Institute revealed that about 60 percent of increased education spending between 1967 and 1991 went to special and compensatory education for students with disabilities or disadvantaged backgrounds. Rothstein and Miles spent months prying the data out of obtuse school budgets, and there has been little work like that since. We journalists mostly ignore special-education developments. But now, thankfully, we have another outpouring of surprises on how special-education money is being spent—and how little we understand it.
The Washington Post
May 2, 2016
The gender “wage gap” has been growing wider and begins earlier than previously understood, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. Young female graduates earn only 79 percent of what their male counterparts do – a decline from 84 percent last year. (Danielle Paquette)
The Washington Post
May 2, 2016
There are similar trends at work in the United States, the Economic Policy Institute reports—including for young college graduates, whose inflation-adjusted earnings are lower than they were in the late 1990s.
The Atlantic
May 2, 2016
While many Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Intel tend to hire more highly skilled workers and pay six-figure salaries, the bulk of H-1B jobs go to lower-level IT workers who are often paid close to the minimum allowed by the visa program, about $60,000, says Ronil Hira, a Howard University public policy professor and researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on labor issues.
Hira, like others critical of the H-1B program, says most U.S. companies are not using the H-1B visa “as a way to alleviate a shortage of STEM-educated U.S. workers; they use it to primarily cut labor costs.”
San Francisco Chronicle
May 2, 2016
There are other criticisms of the H-1B program. Ron Hira, an Economic Policy Institute research associate, associate professor of public policy at Howard University, and author of Outsourcing America, has argued that the visa program is in essence indentured servitude. The employer controls the visa and therefore the employee’s ability to stay in the U.S. Many H-1B holders are from economically disadvantaged situations or see the H-1B visa as the only pathway to permanent residency status. Therefore, they may be willing to work longer hours and make efforts that U.S. citizens would not. Hira also argues that by providing a low cost alternative for employers the program drives down wages for Americans.
Forbes
May 2, 2016
Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said about 5 million new workers will automatically become eligible, and that it would boost employee wages across the country by $1.3 billion. The Economic Policy Institute is even more generous, estimating some 13.5 million workers will have a new or stronger right to overtime pay.
Detroit News
May 2, 2016
The Labor Department calculated that the overtime rule, as proposed, would extend coverage to nearly five million people, of whom 1.2 million would receive a wage hike, with the rest getting a reduction in hours worked. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, put the number of affected workers at more like 13.5 million. Lowering the rule’s threshold to $47,000, EPI calculates, would reduce the number of affected workers to 12.5 million, or 23 percent of the salaried workforce.
Politico
May 2, 2016