Republican appointees would also be likely to target the new franchise ruling, which could make it easier for workers at fast-food companies like McDonald’s to unionize. “There is no permanence to a decision like the one that was reached, which overcome 30 years of mostly Republican decisions,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice-president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
The New Republic
September 4, 2015
The current salary threshold for overtime is badly out of date, says Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute. The last time the overtime threshold was significantly raised, in 1975, $23,660 covered a full 61 percent of salaried employees.
The American Prospect
September 4, 2015
Another study released this week by the Economic Policy Institute documented that despite a solid increase in worker productivity since 2000, the actual wealth generated by those gains went to shareholders and top executives, not the workers.
CBS Moneywatch
September 4, 2015
Overall, immigration is good for the country in myriad ways, including its effects on the wages of most workers. But competition with lesser-skilled immigrants can be a problem for low-wage-earning native-born workers during a recession or a time of high unemployment[pdf], though the effect generally equalizes over time. The only workers whose wages are depressed in a sustained way by lesser-skilled immigration are other immigrant workers with less than a high school degree. That’s evidence we shouldn’t fear immigration, but it’s not an argument for increasing the flow of lesser-skilled, low-wage workers to the United States. The McKinsey Global Institute has projected that in 2020, relative to the number of available jobs, there may be a surplus of about six million workers with a high school degree and of almost one million workers without a high school degree. If these projections are even remotely in the ballpark, then it is highly unlikely that the United States will face labor shortages requiring less-educated, lesser-skilled immigrant workers.
The New York Times
September 3, 2015
One explanation may lie in the findings of another study released on Wednesday by the Economic Policy Institute, also a liberal research group. Its report showed that even as labor productivity has improved steadily since 2000, the benefits from improved efficiency have nearly all gone to companies, shareholders and top executives, rather than rank-and-file employees.
The New York Times
September 3, 2015
The study, conducted by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), finds that from 2000 to 2014, American workers’ total productivity increased 21.6 percent, while the median worker’s compensation, including pay and benefits, rose just 1.8 percent.
The Huffington Post
September 3, 2015
However, growth in this gap eased the following decade and especially since 2000, according to Economic Policy Institute think tank. While there is little question that the long-run effects of technological change are in this upward direction and will thereby make it harder for uneducated workers to command high wages, there is also a growing awareness that increased education alone will not solve the wage stagnation problem.
The New Republic
September 3, 2015
On Point
September 3, 2015
Americans keep working harder and producing more economic growth. But they’re not getting rewarded with any extra pay for it, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
And it means that stagnating wages aren’t workers’ fault. “People have been told that the economy isn’t doing well and therefore that’s why people haven’t done well,” Lawrence Mishel, president of EPI and a co-author of the report, told ThinkProgress. But economic growth has kept increasing at a healthy rate. “Everybody’s wages could have grown substantially. But they didn’t.” This isn’t accidental, either. “We haven’t been in an economic tsunami where people aren’t able to move ahead,” Mishel said. “This is a man-made phenomenon.”
Think Progress
September 3, 2015
The widening chasm between workers’ pay and productivity since the 1970s is “the central component of the wage stagnation story” in the United States, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said in a report issued Wednesday ahead of the Labor Day weekend. Drawing on data from the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EPI economists Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens found that median hourly compensation, adjusted for inflation, grew by 8.7 percent between 1973 and 2014. Productivity rose 72.2 percent over the same time period, the EPI report said. “Productivity and compensation — all wages and benefits for a typical worker — used to grow together from 1948 to 1973, but since 1973 they have diverged,” Mishel said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. “That’s very important.”
Al Jazeera America
September 3, 2015