The Economic Policy Institute said the rule would restore a protection that has been missing for some time. “It’s a very, very simple rule to implement,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the D.C. think tank. “All it requires is looking at your workforce and seeing how you’re paying overtime. It’s something an automated payroll processing system could do in five minutes or a human resource manager could do in a couple hours.”
The Hill
May 4, 2016
Supporters hope the new measure will help stem a decades-long stagnation in U.S. wages. Between 1979 and 2013, middle-income wages rose just 6%, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Low-income wages did even worse, actually declining by 5%. Meanwhile very- high-income wages rose 41%.
Teen Vogue
May 4, 2016
Officially, Trump has promised to rework the nation’s immigration laws into a system that requires companies to hire Americans first before considering foreign workers. Yet Trump has defended his use of temporary immigrant workers at his luxury Mar-a-Lago resort, saying he has “no choice but to do it.” Two House lawmakers who signed on to Long’s letter — Republican Reps. Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York—have also endorsed Trump. “People who like him are seeing him as this restrictionist, but in practice, it’s really hard to tell what he’s going to be,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “But he can certainly influence the bill.”
Politico
May 4, 2016
The Trump Company is now appealing that decision. If Trump loses again, his company is legally obligated to negotiate a contract. That doesn’t mean they will though. “If an employer is really hostile and determined to fight, they have legal routes that can keep the union from getting to the point of negotiating a contract for years and years,” said Ross Eisenbrey with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Public Radio International
May 4, 2016
And while the economy has improved since the Great Recession ended, it’s still not back to precrisis levels. The class of 2016 will enter a job market that continues to suffer from higher levels of unemployment for young Americans and relatively stagnant wage trends, according to a study from left-leaning Economic Policy Institute last month. The percentage of recent grads who are “idled”—meaning neither employed nor in school—is about 10 percent now, up from 8.4 percent in 2007.
CBS Moneywatch
May 4, 2016
If the last few years are any indication, the average Class of 2016 graduate will leave school with five-figure debt. That albatross likely will force graduates to accept jobs without long-term prospects for career or wage growth, according to a new study from the Economic Policy Institute. Analysts at the think tank say that despite the rosy overall employment picture, graduates actually face a tougher labor market than they would have before the 2008 recession. Degree-holders, they say, still contend with elevated levels of unemployment and underemployment, and a large share are neither employed nor pursuing advanced degrees—in other words, they are idling. “Although there have been small improvements, there is still a lot that’s problematic about this economy for young college grads,” said Teresa Kroeger, a research assistant at EPI who co-authored the study. “Wages are still performing poorly. And we see still disparities between genders and racial groups.”
The Washington Post
May 3, 2016
“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
