“There’s a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the tech industry,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Daniel Costa told the Journal. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B program is to the business community.” http://on.wsj.com/1Xkkqjs
Politico
April 11, 2016
Sometimes states fail to allocate good teachers across school districts, with the result that poorer districts end up with the worst teachers. But unions aren’t to blame, according to a report out today from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The misallocations are not more nor less severe or prevalent in states with stronger unions,” EPI’s Emma García and Larry Mishel write. Full report here: http://bit.ly/1XhQjZG
Politico
April 8, 2016
Critics say qualified U.S. workers are being displaced by cheaper foreign hires through the program. They highlight that many H-1Bs are issued to global outsourcing companies, particularly from India, that send workers to the U.S. to acquire skills and then move them back overseas, a practice that essentially promotes outsourcing of American jobs. “There’s a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the tech industry,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B program is to the business community.”
Wall Street Journal
April 8, 2016
Those on the right of the political spectrum aren’t the only ones flagging the drop in participation. Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which advocates for workers, has said the Fed should be patient in raising rates because wage growth remains too tepid, signaling there is still plenty of labor-market slack.
Bloomberg
April 8, 2016
An October study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that free riders represented 20.3 percent of bargaining units in RTW states, compared to only 6.8 percent in non-RTW states.
Baltimore Sun
April 8, 2016
It’s a leap that some business groups and others say could be dangerous for the economy. However, Ben-Ishai of CLASP argues that higher wages leads to higher employee retention as well as more spending money for employees— both outcomes that benefit businesses and the economy as a whole. For example, an Economic Policy Institute report found that increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 over the course of 3 years created a $10.4 billion increase in household consumption.
Washington Monthly
April 8, 2016
It’s more expensive in New Mexico to put an infant in day care for a year than to pay for a year of college at an in-state school, according to a new report on the rising costs of child care across the nation. The sobering statistic is hardly unique to New Mexico, but the study by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group for low- and middle-income workers, is refueling a New Mexico lawmaker’s push to boost the state’s investments in early education programs, even as state revenues are declining.
While the federal government recommends that families spend no more than 10 percent of their household income on child care, Lopez said, the Economic Policy Institute found that New Mexico parents are spending a far higher share of their earnings on child care. The institute found that child care spending in New Mexico—at an average of nearly $8,000 a year for the care of one infant and more than $7,000 for a preschooler’s care—is about 17 percent of the median income of just under $47,000 annually.
Santa Fe New Mexican
April 8, 2016
One restriction cracks down on “earnings stripping,” which involves a foreign company loading a new U.S. subsidiary with debt. This reduces the subsidiary’s taxable income in the U.S., since interest payments on that debt become tax deductible, according to the liberal-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute. Profits funneled into the new parent company are then taxed at the lower rate in the foreign country.
The Huffington Post
April 7, 2016
Not everyone buys into that argument. An April 1 blog post on the Economic Policy Institute’s web page supports California’s tiered minimum wage pay hikes.“Moving beyond the timidity of most recent minimum wage hikes is exactly what is needed if we are to undo decades of falling wages and deteriorating living standards for the lowest-paid third of America’s workforce,” the post said. “Simply put, a bold effort is needed to make up for the lost decades in which the minimum wage was simply eroded by inflation or was increased only modestly.”
Los Angeles Daily News
April 7, 2016
Tepper’s flight to the Sunshine State — and the New Jersey legislature’s resulting woes — highlight both the economic puzzle and the perils of resolving it through increasing taxes. “The tax burden doesn’t stick out — what really sticks out is the inadequacy of their pre-tax income. That’s what’s hurting middle-class families,” Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould told the Monitor last month. “I don’t think, as a share of people’s budget, that [tax cuts are] where the relief should come. We think about middle-class families that are struggling to pay for housing, childcare,” she said. “We need to really think about increasing their wages.”
Christian Science Monitor
April 7, 2016