The reasons for declines in US labour force participation, which measures people in work or looking for a post, are complex and heavily contested. However, experts believe one driver is threadbare support for working parents. “We don’t have the same incentives other countries have for women to stay in the labour force after they have kids,” said Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC.
Financial Times
October 13, 2015
The issues of stagnant wages and wealth inequity will dominate the discussion before next year’s presidential election — and unleash some unusual political dynamics, predicts a leading labor economist. “It will be one of the main topics in the presidential election next year,” said Lawrence Mishel, who has closely studied the issue. Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., a liberal think tank. But he criticized Democrats and Republicans alike at the Pathways From Poverty breakfast, sponsored by the Colorado Center on Law & Policy, on Friday at the History Colorado Center. Since 1973, worker productivity has risen 73 percent, according to an EPI analysis. Higher productivity should result in higher wages, Mishel said, but that link is broken, a reflection of deliberate policy decisions by both parties over several administrations.
The Denver Post
October 13, 2015
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute took a look at the current minimum wage in each state, compared it to the average cost of child care and computed how much of the annual income those costs eat up. It’s not a pretty picture. While federal guidelines say child care should consume no more than 10 percent of a family’s income, the cost of infant care is more than half of a full-time minimum-wage worker’s total earnings in 37 states. The cost of care for a 4-year-old is more than half of total salary in 20 states, according to the study released this week. “Child care is simply out of reach for workers who support their families on minimum-wage jobs,” the institute says.
Sacramento Bee
October 13, 2015
“We will never get robust wage growth that includes the middle class unless we rebuild the collective bargaining system,” EPI’s Lawrence Mishel said in a Virginian-Pilot article on a new House Education and Workforce Committee study explaining how unions raise wages.
The Virginian-Pilot
October 9, 2015
In a column on how Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina are faring well in Republican polls despite having no governing experience, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof quoted EPI’s CEO pay study. Kristof argues that “the United States has overdone the cult of the C.E.O., partly explaining why at the largest companies the ratio of C.E.O. compensation to typical worker pay rose from 20 to one in 1965 to 303 to one in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute.”
The New York Times
October 9, 2015
The Washington Post also covered the child care report, writing, “Child care costs would now devour at least 30 percent of a minimum-wage worker’s earnings in every state, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute has found.”
The Washington Post
October 9, 2015
The New York Times covered EPI’s report on the cost of child care, noting, “Its data led to some stark comparisons. Minimum wage workers in most states would have to work full time from January through July to cover the cost of child care.”
The New York Times
October 9, 2015
The Washington Post‘s Matt Callahan used EPI’s Family Budget Calculator to produce a chart showing how much a family has to earn in the 10 largest U.S. metro areas, by population. The graphic also highlights the highest and lowest costs in these 10 metro areas.
The Washington Post
October 5, 2015
The Guardian‘s Jana Kasperkevic cited EPI research in a story about how opponents of raising the minimum benefit from pitting workers against each other. “About 28% of the workers who would benefit from a higher minimum wage have children, according to Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning thinktank. About 55% of them work full-time and 44% have some college experience. The average age of affected workers is 35, with 35.5% of them being at least 40 years old,” Kasperkevic wrote.
The Guardian
October 5, 2015
In the International Business Times’ coverage of the September jobs report, EPI’s Elise Gould notes that the report is evidence that the Federal Reserve was right not to raise rates in September.
International Business Times
October 5, 2015