The nine Supreme Court judges will soon hear arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and their ruling could transform all of the American public sector into a “right-to-work” zone. The result could be lower wages for public employees around the country, according to the author of a recent study from the pro-union Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Al Jazeera America
October 19, 2015
Any increase would have major consequences in Texas, because we have so many low-wage workers and a high poverty rate. If the pay floor rose to $12 an hour by 2020, almost 3.5 million Texans would get a bump, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Dallas Morning News
October 19, 2015
No one has to tell working parents how ridiculously expensive child care has become in this country. Still, a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., certainly puts an eye-opening exclamation point on that fact. That study showed that a year of child care for a 4-year-old costs about 16 percent more than a year’s tuition at UNC Chapel Hill.
Charlotte Observer
October 19, 2015
Lawrence wrote that while the image concerns that pushed her to take the deal could be chalked up to being young – or part of her personality – there was maybe something deeper in play. “Are we socially conditioned to behave this way? We’ve only been able to vote for what, 90 years? I’m seriously asking – my phone is on the counter and I’m on the couch, so a calculator is obviously out of the question. Could there still be a lingering habit of trying to express our opinions in a certain way that doesn’t ‘offend’ or ‘scare’ men?” she wrote. (A study by the Economic Policy Institute in April found that “at the median, women’s hourly wages are only 83 percent of men’s hourly wages.”)
Entertainment Weekly
October 16, 2015
But the real concern is that this new rule will draw attention to an unflattering comparison. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that among the largest publicly owned U.S. firms, CEOs make over 300 times the salary of a median worker. In 2014, chief executives at these top 350 companies earned 16.3 million on average.
The Washington Post
October 16, 2015
Perhaps the most data-driven work on the program is Ms. Harting’s, drawn from a graph created by the Economic Policy Institute, using data generated by Messrs. Pinketty and Saez. The data, which come from the period 1979 to 2007, show income growth for the bottom 90% staying relatively stagnant, sometimes even dropping into negative territory, before hitting 5% in the final year. The line representing the top 1% of households, meanwhile, ends up 224%.
Wall Street Journal
October 16, 2015
Twenty-six states have increased their minimum wage since January 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
CNN Money
October 16, 2015
This is the main statistic used to argue that the middle class is struggling mightily. If you take inflation into account, the typical family’s income is lower today than it was in 1995,according to analysis of census data by the Economic Policy Institute…
Fortune
October 16, 2015
Still, there’s little evidence that 401(k)s will be as significant a source of income for retirees as pensions were back in the day, said Monique Morrisey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute who did the analysis. “There’s very little money in these things [401(k)s],” she told HuffPost. “Yes, they’re gonna increase, but not enough.”
The Huffington Post
October 16, 2015
Sadly, these conditions are hardly unique in the Apple supply chain. As the political economist Isaac Shapiro explained on the Economic Policy Institute website, Apple’s 2014 report acknowledged a compliance rate regarding its own standards of only 70 percent—down from 77 a year earlier. Its enforcement of the hours these workers put in is also down from the previous year. They are exploited this way despite the fact that Apple’s labor costs amount to a tiny fraction of its profits, especially given the fantastically generous compensation packages its top executives enjoy. Shapiro pointed out that in 2011 and 2012, the top nine members of Apple’s executive team received compensation packages equal to that of fully 90,000 Chinese factory workers.
The Nation
October 16, 2015