If you steal $600 worth of merchandise, the police will probably come after you. But if your employer steals $600 of your wages, you are likely to never see that money again. And chances are high that you have experienced wage theft yourself, whether you work a 9-to-5 job or are an independent contractor. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that wage theft is costing US workers $50 billion a year.
VOX
March 8, 2016
The American nest egg is facing financial extinction. Aging workers who thought they could relax in retirement face unprecedented economic stressors, according to new analysis of retirement wealth. Data from Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reveals retirement wealth is turning into retirement poverty for a growing portion of working households. The labor-focused think tank finds that “retirement wealth has not grown fast enough to keep pace with an aging population and other changes.” While retirement wealth has risen in absolute terms since the 1990s, EPI observes that the growth trend has lagged behind changes in the aging population’s size and needs.
The Nation
March 8, 2016
It was no doubt a poor choice of words from the Vermont senator, but not without some basis in reality as The Washington Post points to the Economic Policy Institute, which said, “Nearly half (45%) of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, but only a little more than a tenth (12%) of poor white children live in similar neighborhoods.”
Teen Vogue
March 8, 2016
And according to the Economic Policy Institute, 42 percent of Hispanic workers and 36 percent of black workers make poverty-level wages, compared with 23 percent of white workers.
The Nation
March 8, 2016
The debate has political implications, too. Loud voices on both the left and the right argue the unemployment rate tells a too-optimistic story about the recovery because the Labor Department’s definition of an unemployed worker doesn’t include someone who gave up on a job search and took early retirement, applied for disability benefits, enrolled in school or otherwise left the workforce. The liberal Economic Policy Institute says February’s 4.9% jobless rate would be 6.3% if “missing workers” were included. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump cites low participation to say the jobless rate is really in double digits.
Wall Street Journal
March 7, 2016
Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said February’s jobs numbers suggested the Federal Reserve should refrain from further interest rate hikes. “Continued months of strong job growth should eventually translate into durable accelerations in wage growth,” he said, “but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Politico
March 7, 2016
So if free trade policies like NAFTA didn’t drive Detroit’s decline, that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect the city’s (or the state of Michigan’s) economy. Sanders’ 43,000 figure comes from a 2011 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning policy think tank that has produced several reports about the potential detrimental effects of trade pacts like NAFTA and TPP.
NPR
March 7, 2016
But a series of new—and slightly depressing—charts from the Economic Policy Institute point out more of the ways that the retirement accounts are falling short. Instead of leveling the playing field in retirement, 401(k) plans have the effect of magnifying income inequality, says Monique Morrissey, an economist for EPI who focuses on retirement. And differences in income alone don’t explain the difference, she said, citing that tax law and differences in risk tolerance also could be deepening the gap between what low income and high income workers are able to set aside for retirement. Take a look at some of EPI’s most compelling charts, which analyze data from the Census and the Federal Reserve…
The Washington Post
March 7, 2016
There are no comprehensive numbers on what proportion of named executive officers’ compensation is tax-deductible. Steven Balsam, a professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business, took a swing at the subject four years ago. In an oft-cited paper, “Taxes and Executive Compensation,” written for the Economic Policy Institute, he analyzed compensation paid by 7,248 companies in 2010.
The Washington Post
March 7, 2016
Here, from the Economic Policy Institute, is something very easy to understand. Black Americans suffer from significantly higher levels of unemployment even when they have the same level of education as white people. It takes some impressive acrobatics of rhetoric to exclude past and present racism from the reasons behind a situation like this, when black people suffer nearly double (or more than double) the unemployment as white people do at all educational levels.
Gawker
March 7, 2016