From 1978 to 2014, CEO compensation surged a staggering 997 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Over the same period, typical workers saw compensation grow a modest 10.9 percent. In 1978, CEOs took home about 30 times what the average worker made. In 2014, they earned about 300 times more, according to EPI.
U.S. News & World Report
March 17, 2016
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute published a report a year ago concluding that wage theft “in the United States is a huge problem for struggling workers.” “Surveys reveal that the underpayment of owed wages can reduce affected workers’ income by 50 percent or more,” the report said.
The Hill
March 17, 2016
According to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the growth in wages adjusted for inflation, or alternatively, wages and benefits adjusted for inflation, has been concentrated among those at the top of the income distribution since the onset of the Great Recession.
CBS Moneywatch
March 17, 2016
First, the Economic Policy Institute disproved the claim that low-wage workers are mostly teenagers trying to make pocket money. EPI reports that minimum-wage workers average 35 years of age and 88 percent are 20 or older, and they earn half of their families’ total income. Any additional income these workers make would instantly be reinvested into the economy through essential purchases.
Los Angeles Daily News
March 17, 2016
In addition to a $25 per ton tax on carbon, the budget includes the text of the End Polluter Welfare Act — what Ross calls “the gold standard” for ending fossil fuel subsidies. These acts would raise revenue, which would allow programs to offset costs passed to low-income consumers. “We don’t want their real income to be hurt, but we want the price signal,” Josh Bivens, a research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, told ThinkProgress. “You have to pay more on your energy bill, but here is a pile of cash to make up for that.”
Think Progress
March 17, 2016
Right now the unemployment rate in the U.S. is 4.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. For Native Americans, the unemployment rate is a staggering 22 percent, more than twice that of Hispanics and African-Americans. As a result, one-in-four Native Americans is currently living in poverty – about double the rate of the general population. According to the Economic Policy Institute: American Indians have endured very high levels of unemployment in the wake of the Great Recession. The American Indian unemployment situation is worse than average in the Midwest, Northern Plains, and Southwest regions.
Michigan Public Radio
March 17, 2016
More importantly, there’s the question of the nature of the source of economic growth in the Clinton years. Having pushed for and signed NAFTA, Mr. Clinton watched as more than 650,000 jobs eventually moved overseas due to the trade agreement, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
New York Observer
March 17, 2016
U.S. public schools are more segregated today than they have been for decades. In a 2013 report, the Economic Policy Institute’s Richard Rothstein wrote: Today, African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago, while most education policymakers and reformers have abandoned integration as a cause.
The Washington Post
March 16, 2016
Though it has the second-highest black unemployment rate in the country at 12.4 percent, Michigan also has fewer African-Americans as a proportion of its population than most states in the South. “The data clearly tells a story that is consistent with what we’ve seen with Clinton having a higher percentage of black support than Sanders,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the liberal Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy. “Whether that support is necessarily driven by economics or unemployment, it’s not clear,” she said.
The Huffington Post
March 16, 2016
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute said there’s another reason the Fed will avoid a hike: Last month’s report on wage growth – or the lack of it.“There was this narrative developing that we had finally turned the corner on wage growth and that two, two and a half percent nominal wage growth we’d gotten used to, we were finally going to break out of that zone, and we did not,” Bivens said. “It was a bad stumble last month.” He said the Fed may raise rates again in June.
Marketplace
March 16, 2016