The Economic Policy Institute said this year a survey of non-union private sector employers show that mandatory arbitration clauses have doubled since 2000. The institute said that 56 percent of non-union workers in the private sector, or 60 million people, are covered by such agreements.
The Quad-City Times | December 7, 2017
The Republican tax reform efforts may worsen inequality and lead to more missed opportunities for children who lack the advantages of wealth and privilege, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Because the tax bill is regressive — meaning poorer families will bear more of the burden than wealthier ones — it will put disadvantaged households at greater risk of financial insecurity, she said. “The payment for it will come down the pike and [lawmakers] will likely reduce social safety nets” such as food stamps and other anti-poverty programs, Gould said. “If you reduce those programs, that will reduce their economic future.”
CBS Moneywatch | December 7, 2017
But the proposed rule as published does not explicitly require that the tips stay among the workers. Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Department’s former top economist under Obama, said she expects that at least some restaurant owners would appropriate the tips for themselves if the letter of the law allows it. “Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips,” Shierholz, now a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post.
The Huffington Post | December 6, 2017
The organization pointed to a line in the Labor Department document, which specifically says that managers could use pooled tip money to make structural improvements, like expanding the dining area, or to lower menu prices. “Crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a statement. Democrats have also come out in opposition to the rule change.
CNN Money | December 6, 2017
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy institute (EPI), points to research that shows illegal wage theft exceeds $15 billion every year. “It seems obvious that when employers can legally pocket the tips earned by their employees, many will do so,” she said. … In fact, Shierholz and her team at EPI are currently working on a way to quantify the economic disadvantages the said rule would have on employees. By using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current population survey and IRS data, the EPI is deriving a way to examine how much money would be transferred from employees to their bosses. With the caveat that both sources tend to underreport tips, Shierholz asserts that the DOL has a legal obligation to do a thorough analysis. “Make no mistake: as a result of this rule, workers will take home less, and their loss will be employers’ gain,” she said. “And Trump’s DOL is willing to break the requirements of the rulemaking process to attempt to hide that fact.”
Yahoo Finance | December 6, 2017
This would mean that “restaurants would be able to pool the tips servers receive and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. The proposed rule wouldn’t even require employers to share those tips with their employees. “Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips,” according to the EPI. Employers do take tip earnings from employees already, as “recent research suggests that the total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year, and workers in restaurants and bars are much more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than workers in other industries,” according to the EPI.
Salon | December 6, 2017
The American Prospect | December 6, 2017
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the rule leaves room for employers to keep the tips for themselves, as long as the tipped employees earn a base minimum wage. “This would be a big transfer of money from workers to employers,” said Shierholz, who previously worked for Obama’s Labor Department. “The restaurant industry has wanted this forever. They want to be able to capture tips.”
The Washington Post | December 5, 2017
What’s worse, the proposed change might not even end up benefitting non-tipped workers. As the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz pointed out (emphasis hers): Crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket those tips.
Splinter News | December 5, 2017
Heidi Sheirholz, a former Labor Department economist now with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, argued this change would theoretically allow employers to claim all workers’ tips for themselves. “Crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute pooled tips to workers,” Sheirholz wrote.
The Washington Examiner | December 5, 2017
In 2017 we know this was so much wishful thinking. Men remain firmly entrenched in power. Those who peddled tales of women’s imminent takeover of the professional world simply ignored or glossed over inconvenient facts. In the United States, female workforce participation peaked around the millennium and then fell. As for the pay gap, it remains alive and well. A survey released earlier this year by the Economic Policy Institute found that women earned, on average, 22 percent less than men per hour when controlled for race, experience, and education. Men earned more than women whether they worked as kindergarten teachers or as metal fabricators. As for those collaborative skills, they weren’t so in demand when their possessors were no longer in the first blush of youth; a 2015 survey published by the National Bureau of Economic Statistics discovered “robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women.”
The Nation | December 5, 2017
But there’s another possible reason that red-state participation is lagging. “[P]art of it is a story of austerity,” said Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. While noting that the advantage blue states showed in the data appeared modest, Bivens said that states adopting cost-cutting measures could have put a damper on economic participation. “Growth in state and local spending has been historically slow since the Great Recession, and this drag from state and local governments is probably the single largest reason why the economy overall took so long to recover,” he said in an email. “I know that this state austerity has been most extreme in red states ([Gov. Sam] Brownback’s [Kansas] being the real exemplar here), and, I would absolutely expect states that did deeper cutting to have their recoveries lag overall averages.”
CBS Moneywatch | December 4, 2017
Most companies aren’t that rich, though. Eighty-six percent of households with pass-through income already pay a top marginal income tax rate of 25 percent or less, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. (House Republicans eventually amended their plan with a complex scheme for a lower effective rate for companies with lower incomes.)
The Huffington Post | December 4, 2017
“The GOP’s use of the term ‘small business’ conjures up images of neighborhood stores run by hardworking Americans carving out a modest living,” said Hunter Blair, an analyst from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in a statement. “None of these households would benefit from the Republican plan.” The wealthiest 1 percent of households already claim 69 percent of pass-through income, the EPI said.
CBS Moneywatch | November 30, 2017
“If you’re not being paid, you’re not considered as an employee, then you’re unfortunately sacrificing your right to not be discriminated against in a gross and disgusting way,” Celine McNicholas, labor counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Bustle. “Recent developments and news coverage have shown how susceptible young women are to this kind of treatment. Unpaid internships compound these problems. Your first experience is one where you don’t have a voice.” (Celine quoted throughout)
Bustle | November 29, 2017
The Washington Post | November 28, 2017
As I wrote last year, in a report on the economic costs of conflicted investment advice, President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers concluded that “conflicted advice costs Americans about $17 billion in foregone retirement earnings each year.” Over the summer, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, estimated that an 18-month delay in the full implementation of the rule would cost retirement savings $10.9 billion over the next 30 years. The EPI has also previously estimated that earlier delays under the Trump administration will cost savers $7.6 billion over the next 30 years.
Pacific Standard | November 28, 2017
“Perhaps the most intuitive reason we know these cuts will fail to spark wage growth is that corporate profit rates have been historically high since 2007, while business investment has been historically low,” Josh Bivens, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, wrote this week.
The New York Times | November 27, 2017
According to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, “The reason to oppose the latest round of Republican tax cuts is that they’re simply unfair and stupid and solve no economic problem facing typical American families. That should be more than enough.”
Common Dreams | November 27, 2017
But Heidi Shierholz, who was the chief economist at Obama’s Labor Department and who now directs a project on worker rights and wages at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said that there were no credible studies showing that regulations cost American jobs. Some industries, such as the fossil fuel industry, may suffer disruption and losses, she said, but others — such as renewable energy — step in. She accused Trump of campaigning as a populist but governing as a big-business president when it comes to regulations to protect people. (Heidi quoted throughout)
St. Louis Post Dispatch | November 27, 2017
But many believe the loophole had the opposite effect, driving companies instead to pay more in stock options and certain performance-based bonuses, which actually supercharged the growth in CEO pay. In 1989, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the median value of annual CEO compensation was $2.7 million. By 1995 it was $6.6 million, and it reached $13 million in 2016.
The Washington Post | November 27, 2017
Cheap labor has attracted American companies to Mexico for decades. The Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott estimates about 800,000 U.S. jobs were lost to Mexico between 1997 and 2013. NAFTA became law in 1994.
CNN Money | November 27, 2017
Unemployment for black Americans at 7.5 percent is almost twice the rate it is for whites, and after the Great Recession of 2008 hit a high of 16.8 percent. The annual unemployment rate for blacks with at least a college degree was 3.7 percent in June, compared to 2.3 percent for whites with at least a college degree, according to data from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Boston Globe | November 27, 2017
At the same time that families have been asked to shoulder more of the responsibility of the cost of college, they’ve also been struggling to stretch their limited dollars. The wages of middle-class workers have grown just 6% since 1979 and low-wage workers’ wages actually dropped 5% during that period, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Market Watch | November 22, 2017
A 2015 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimated that wages in right-to-work states are 12.7 percent lower than in states without those laws. Another study, released last April, concluded that the law resulted in workers in Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin losing 2.6 percent of their earnings along with a 2.1 percent decline in the unionization rate.
City & State | November 22, 2017
Today is the last day for people around the world to apply to what’s known as the diversity lottery program. That’s the program that gives U.S. visas to people from countries with low rates of immigration. The recent round of applications is for fiscal year of 2019. The program made recent headlines after a recipient was accused of carrying out a deadly terrorist attack in Manhattan, which prompted calls from President Donald Trump to do away with the program. What would stopping the program do to the U.S. economy? (Daniel Costa is in the full clip)
Marketplace | November 22, 2017
But Trump Labor Secretary Alex Acosta plans to revise and lower the salary level substantially – with the result that workers struggling on as little as $31,000 a year could be forced to work long hours with no extra pay, and leaving 9.1 million fewer workers protected according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post | November 21, 2017
“That scarring, of not being able to get that experience after graduation, is very harmful,” says Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. By contrast, many younger Millennials have pursued their first jobs in a healthy labor market the past few years. For employers, a 24-year-old just starting out may be a more attractive and cheaper hire than a 32-year-old with a spotty resume, McLaughlin says. As a result, some members of the older group may continue to struggle with underemployment and lower wages and move out on their own at a slower-than-normal pace, Gould says. (Elise quoted throughout)
USA Today | November 21, 2017
Despite the cost, a college degree has its benefits: Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows US college graduates in 2015 earned 56% more than high-school graduates, the biggest gap between the two groups since 1973. But, in the US at least, the return on higher education is high in part because of stagnant and falling wages for low-skilled earners. Millennials may be rushing to get college degrees in part because the alternatives are getting worse.
Quartz | November 20, 2017
The Economic Policy Institute has compiled a national look at state laws that prevent local governments from mandating better working conditions in cities and counties than state law provides. (whole story/map included)
Arkansas Times | November 20, 2017