Not surprisingly, New York’s tax bill and tax rate exceed the national average. Nationwide, the average tax bill is $15,522 — which is 56.4% lower than New York’s — and the average tax rate is 13.6%, which is less than that of 16 states.
Data for this study came from the 2025 Economic Policy Institute Family Budget Calculator and the U.S. Census Bureau. The report defined middle-class households as having two adults and two children.
Long Island Life & Politics
July 28, 2025
According to the national Economic Policy Institute, average annual expenses for infant care in Nebraska have reached $14,106, or about $5,000 more per year than in-state tuition for four-year public college. For a 4-year-old, child care costs have approached nearly $12,000 a year.
Nebraska Examiner
July 28, 2025
Districts across the country struggle to find drivers, with 12.2% fewer school bus drivers on the road in September of 2024 compared to five years prior, according to a study published in the Economic Policy Institute.
Canton Repository
July 28, 2025
Meanwhile, nonpartisan think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute say Initiative 82 should remain and, in a recent report, said, “There is little evidence that increasing tipped wages is hurting the DC restaurant industry.” The report also highlighted that the number of restaurants in Washington, D.C. has grown since the implementation of Initiative-82.
WUSA 9
July 28, 2025
For more details, we turn to Ben Zipperer, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, based in Washington, DC. According to his research, ICE arrests, detentions and deportations of noncitizen workers would also harm U.S.-born workers, an impact that has yet to appear on the public radar screen.
“Immigrant workers make up a substantial part of the workforce in the United States: 1 in 5 workers is an immigrant, and about half of immigrants are noncitizens,” according to Zipperer. “Because of their sizable presence in the workforce, large-scale attempts to remove them will lead to extensive employment losses for foreign-born workers. What is less apparent, however, is the impact that arrests, detentions, and deportations of immigrants will have on millions of U.S.-born workers who will lose their jobs. The widespread job losses for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers will undercut the narrative that abruptly removing immigrants will somehow magically increase employment opportunities for U.S.-born workers.”
Counterpunch
July 28, 2025
We’ve all been there. Maybe it’s when you grab a coffee in the morning or when you finish up a dinner out with friends. Maybe it’s when you least expect it, like at the merch table at a concert. You tap your card, only to be confronted with the dreaded tip screen. There’s a lot of talk about how much to tip and if you even should tip (more on that later), but why do we add gratuity in America in the first place?
Nina Mast has the answer. She’s an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, DC. The point of the tip is to make up the difference between the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage. “The tipped minimum wage is the lower minimum wage that employers can pay tipped workers with the expectation that tips will bring their pay up to the regular minimum wage rate,” she says. “Under federal law, the tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. So tipped workers need to earn an additional $5.12 in tips to bring them up to the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour.”
On this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast, we find out how this system began and why we still have it.
Vox Explain It To Me Podcast
July 28, 2025
Nina Mast, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, has studied the methods of the restaurant-industry lobby closely. She’s an expert on child labor, which has grown increasingly pervasive in recent years, as states have loosened restrictions on the number of hours that teens can legally work on school nights, and permitted their involvement in alcohol service and hazardous jobs such as roofing. In Iowa, Florida, and several other states, the restaurant lobby has pushed for these policies, she told me, in part to address what the lobby claims were labor shortages caused by the pandemic.
The New Yorker
July 28, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that Starbucks has likely had more complaints of illegal union-busting filed against it than any other company in the National Labor Relations Board’s 90-year history.
Common Dreams
July 28, 2025
The survey, conducted this month, shows increases across nearly all metrics. It comes as reports show teachers earn 73 cents for every dollar made by similarly educated professionals, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
NC Newsline
July 28, 2025
Finally, how you make money matters. For instance, people who work multiple jobs won’t necessarily get the overtime deduction.
“If somebody works 50 hours a week at one job, they get overtime for those 10 extra hours. But for someone who has two jobs at 25 hours each, they get no overtime pay,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
If the law is renewed or becomes permanent — and with bi-partisan support there’s a chance it may — Shierholz worries it could shift workplace dynamics. Some workers may ask for more overtime, and employers might encourage it so they can hire fewer employees and spend less on benefits. Shierholz also says the law could further incentivize tipping over paying a guaranteed wage.
“So this is just not going to be the kind of game changer for working people that it’s been touted as,” she said.
Marketplace
July 28, 2025