Quote: “It’s just really hard for workers to enter or reenter the labor market.”—Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, on the rise of long-term joblessness among Americans, despite a low unemployment rate (Bloomberg)
HR Brew
October 7, 2026
Some background: An Atlantic writer named Dani Alexis Ryskamp went through old episodes to work out how much Homer made at the nuclear power plant. In today’s dollars, it comes out to about $55,000. When the show started, CEOs earned about 60 times what their average worker earned. Now they make 325 times as much. Call this the Mr. Burns-Homer Simpson ratio.
Justin Wolfers Substack
October 7, 2026
The bill is supported by the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, SEIU, National Nurses United…Economic Policy Institute.
McKnight’s Senior Living
October 7, 2026
The average cost of childcare is $15,394 a year in New York, the sixth-most expensive state in the nation, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Center Square
October 7, 2026
Josh Bivens is the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit think-tank that researches working class economic issues. He told KERA in an email that cost of living is not just a price issue — it’s a race between income growth and prices.
“I would also note that the price of pet ownership has risen much faster than overall inflation for years, and, that’s likely a steady pressure here regardless of what is happening to overall cost of living concerns,” he said.
Bivens added that, since 2000, the price index for “pet services, including veterinary care” has risen more than twice as fast as overall inflation.
Over the last two years, the United States has seen an uptick in price inflation due to the Iran War and tariff effects paired with a deceleration in wage growth, hitting lowest-wage workers the hardest, Bivens said.
KERA (Dallas NPR)
October 7, 2026
Experts are calling the September jobs report weak—and that could be due to economic uncertainty, according to Elise Gould, Economic Policy Institute senior economist.
“Payroll employment growth has averaged 50,000 over the last three months, but it continues to be relatively volatile,” Gould said in statements on Bluesky. “Economic uncertainty may be at play in the latest spell of weakness and downward revisions.”
Forbes
October 7, 2026
Black women built middle-class careers in public service, and in 2025 those careers were cut. Black women lost roughly 95,000 federal jobs last year, and their employment rate fell 1.4 percentage points, one of the sharpest one-year drops in a quarter century, according to the Economic Policy Institute. College-educated Black women took the biggest hit, a 3.5-point drop. Their unemployment rate climbed from 5.8% to 6.7%.
Black Enterprise
October 7, 2026
A 2023 Brookings Institution review found voucher programs generated outcomes ranging from significant gains to no measurable effect, while researchers at the Economic Policy Institute concluded vouchers generally underperform traditional public schools.
MassLive.com
October 7, 2026
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a two-parent, two-child family in a small city such as Hanford, California, would need $8,417 per month to cover the cost of living, compared with more than twice that amount $19,275 for the same family in San Francisco.
Live NOW from FOX
October 7, 2026
Buffett told shareholders the market does not reward teachers and nurses the way it rewards entertainers, athletes, or investors who can spot a valuable business, MoneyWise noted. At the time, the pay gap between teachers and similarly educated workers in other fields was 6.1%.
It is now 25.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, after hitting a record high in 2024. That gap has not closed since he spoke. It has gotten four times wider.
The Street
October 7, 2026