Media clips
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Many child-care workers’ wages are so low that they could not afford to put their own children in child-care programs, according to the study by the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. In Los Angeles County, a child-care worker’s median annual income in 2014 was $22,000, according to the study. By contrast, a pre-school worker earned about $30,000. The Economic Policy Institute has calculated a one-person family budget for Los Angeles County to be about $35,000, which is considered the cost of a “modest, yet adequate” lifestyle, including housing, food, child care and transportation costs.
Los Angeles Daily News November 9, 2015 -
Nationwide, for 2014, child care and preschool workers earned low wages and few received healthcare or pension benefits, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit think tank. The report finds that across the country, despite a high percentage of workers with some college education, most did not earn enough to cover a basic family budget. In Los Angeles County, the problem was acute. Most child care workers earned less than the poverty threshold for full-time work. Two-thirds of preschool workers couldn’t cover a one-person budget with their full-time wage while over 90 percent of all L.A. County child care workers fell short of paying for basic living expenses. “Across the country, child care workers have a difficult time making ends meet,” said Elise Gould, the report’s author. “The poverty rate of child care workers is twice that of other workers.”
Southern California Public Radio November 9, 2015 -
One place all that money is not going: the pockets of the workers doing all that childcare. On average, these women (it’s almost entirely women) are paid significantly less than the average American worker and are twice as likely to live in poverty, a new study released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. The median hourly wage for childcare workers in the U.S. is $10.39, nearly 40 percent below the median hourly wage of workers in other occupations. Even when accounting for the demographic makeup of the childcare industry—workers are more likely to be minorities, much more likely to be women, and less likely to have a bachelor’s or advanced degree—their earnings were still 23 percent lower than in other occupations. Childcare workers also had less access to benefits, such as health insurance and retirement funds, than people employed in other fields.
The Atlantic November 6, 2015 -
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute told us that child care costs are more than rent in many U.S. cities and more than in-state college tuition in others. In its latest report, a study on the wages of U.S. child care workers, the EPI follows up with the understatement of the year: “The unaffordability of child care is not driven by excessively lavish pay in the sector.” In fact, in most cities and regions in the country, more than 90 percent of child care workers (excluding preschool teachers) don’t make enough money to achieve a “modest yet adequate living standard” for one person where they live, a standard drawn by the EPI’s family budget calculator. Child care workers who support other family members have it even tougher, which is one reason why 1 in 7 live below the poverty line and nearly half use one or more public support programs to make ends meet, compared with just a quarter of the total workforce.
Slate November 6, 2015 -
In a new analysis, Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), finds that child care workers are among the lowest-paid workers in the country. On average, child care professionals made $10.31 an hour in 2014—39% less than the average worker in the U.S., who earns an average $17 an hour. Moreover, most of these employees don’t receive job-based benefits: In 2014, only 15% of child care workers had health insurance and just 9% had pensions.
Fortune November 6, 2015 -
The people taking care of America’s children are some of the lowest-paid workers in the country, according to a study published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. The report found that nationwide, median pay for child care workers is $10.31 per hour — 39.3 percent less than the median wage of $17 an hour earned by workers in other sectors. In fact, a look at official data shows that median child care worker pay is only slightly higher than median pay for retail salespeople, which is $10.29 an hour.
The Huffington Post November 6, 2015 -
The release of 2015 scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), or the Nation’s Report Card, finds either stagnation or dips in both reading and math in both 4th and 8th grades for the first time in 20 years. The results have prompted much ado. But much of that ado is, at the end of the day, about nothing. There has been speculation that this two-year dip suggests the Common Core isn’t working, that the Standards are needed more than ever, and even that the results are to be expected given the 7-year starvation of school budgets since the onset of the Great Recession. All of this is debatable, but more important points about NAEP have been captured beautifully in a serious, well-designed study that assesses NAEP scores as they were intended to be assessed – longitudinally, and with the benefit of relevant controls. The study, Bringing It Back Home, was produced by Stanford’s Martin Carnoy, Emma Garcia of the Economic Policy Institute, and Tatiana Khavenson of the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and released by the Economic Policy Institute at the end of October.
The Huffington Post November 6, 2015 -
The coalition gained national attention last summer after crashing an annual central bankers’ meeting in Jackson, Wyo., arguing that the Federal Reserve should keep interest rates low amid sluggish wage growth and inflation. Interest rates came up again at yesterday’s Dallas Fed meeting. “We urged Robert to vote in support of keeping short-term interest rates at essentially zero,” said Josh Bivens, research and policy director for the Economic Policy Institute. “The concern is that the economy hasn’t returned to a full recovery, there’s plenty of slack to be taken up and the risk of tightening too soon is much higher than letting rates stay low. That burden falls disproportionately on low-wage workers and people of color.”
Dallas Morning News November 6, 2015 -
The trade deficit is a problem because it means demand within American borders is driving economic activity in other countries instead of here. That arguably makes it the single biggest drag on America’s ability to create jobs here at home and reach full employment. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has estimated that eliminating currency manipulation could create between 2.3 million and 5.8 million new American jobs.
The Week November 6, 2015 -
As Andrew J. Cherlin points out in “Labor’s Love Lost,” his study of the disintegration of the working-class white family, the share of blue-collar jobs in the U.S. economy declined from 28 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2010. Work in the service or retail sectors was no bargain, either: As research by Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute demonstrates, the real median hourly wage for white men with no more than a high school diploma declined from $19.76 in 1979 to $17.50 in 2014.
The Washington Post November 5, 2015