Cuomo is seeking a $15 minimum wage for all of New York—the first statewide push of its kind. “This is a whole new ballgame,” says David Cooper, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “We’ve seen some of these efforts at city level … but for a state to be proposing it, this is a big deal.”
Fortune
September 11, 2015
A struggling middle class also means there isn’t enough consumer demand to generate employment, Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told HuffPost. Further exacerbating the issue is that much of the income gains have been redistributed upwards.
The Huffington Post
September 11, 2015
But it has come at the cost of employees, and labor advocates argue that this feeds into a variety of longer-term problems. Parents who work erratic schedules are more likely to have children with cognitive and behavioral issues, according to an August study from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank.
The Christian Science Monitor
September 10, 2015
Is a Supreme Court surprise coming on affirmative action in college admissions? Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., looks at the possibilities in regard to the court’s upcoming second look at Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.
The Washington Post
September 10, 2015
The effective rate for the biggest companies is actually under 20 percent thanks to loopholes, tax breaks, and accounting schemes, while many pay nothing at all. Further lowering rates isn’t likely to improve the economy, either. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found no evidence that high corporate tax rates hurt economic growth; by contrast, corporate profits continue to hit record highs under the current regime.
Think Progress
September 10, 2015
After allowing for regional economic and demographic variables, wages in right-to-work states are 3.2 percent lower than in states without the anti-union laws, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, which advocates on behalf of workers.
Kansas City Star
September 10, 2015
The Times called the Fed a “crucial player” in efforts to undo the decades-long trend of worker wages not growing in sync with the broader economy. The paper noted that from 1973 to 2014, median worker pay rose 7.8 percent while overall productivity increased by 72 percent, a finding published Wednesday in a report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post
September 9, 2015
Recently, cities and counties have taken the lead on mandating much higher pay for traditional low-wage jobs, instead of waiting for the states or the federal government. Supporters say these increases are long overdue and only fair, but others warn of unintended consequences, including job losses and cutbacks in hours.
- David Cooper – economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, focusing on labor markets and minimum wage
- Lydia DePillis – Washington Post reporter covering labor, business, and housing.
- Aparna Mathur – resident scholar in economic policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School Of Public Policy.
New Hampshire Public Radio
September 9, 2015
Why has worker pay withered? The answer, in large part, is that rising productivity has increasingly boosted corporate profits, executive compensation and shareholder returns rather than worker pay. Chief executives, for example, now make about 300 times more than typical workers, compared with 30 times more in 1980, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Other research shows far greater discrepancies at some companies.
The New York Times
September 8, 2015
Still in Sydney (next stop Tokyo), where it’s much too beautiful a day to sit inside blogging. But I did want to flag an excellent report by Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel on the productivity-pay gap. The divergence between pay and productivity — a lot of productivity gains, almost total failure to trickle down—is one of the most striking features of American economics these past 40 (!) years. It’s also the subject of endless attempts at debunking, of claims that the divergence is somehow a statistical artifact. What Bivens and Mishel do is take on these arguments carefully, not dismissing them completely, but showing that they explain only a fraction of what we see.
The New York Times
September 8, 2015