Yet, as was documented in testimony by immigration experts Ron Hira of Howard University and Hal Salzman of Rutgers, most of the H-1B visas aren’t being used to hire people with specialized skills. “The vast majority of H-1Bs who are coming in have no more than ordinary IT skills,” Hira testified.
Los Angeles Times
February 29, 2016
Finally, companies can cut profit margins or top-level salaries to meet higher wage mandates. This last mechanism is one reason such policies get so much pushback from business, and it is particularly germane in an economy where income inequality stands at historically high levels. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, the real earnings of low-wage workers in Alabama are down 6 percent compared with 1979, while those of the state’s highest-paid workers are up 17 percent.
The Washington Post
February 29, 2016
Cruz’s wealth, with $1.2 million in combined income with his wife in 2014, placed them well above the $423,000 threshold of the top 1 percent of earners in Texas, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report.
Reuters
February 29, 2016
Clinton also commended Wall Street for helping to create “the nation’s wealth,” when, in reality, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the “economic cycle that began in 2000 and ended late [2007] was one of the weakest on record for working families, despite strong overall economic growth.”
Salon
February 29, 2016
Here too we’ve had years of warning: Real wages for most U.S. workers have been relatively stagnant since the 1970s, while those for the top 1 percent have increased 156 percent, and those for the top 0.1 percent have increased 362 percent, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
Politico
February 29, 2016
See excerpt: Wage stagnation and wage inequality easily top the list of economic issues Americans are most concerned about—look no further than the presidential election, which has largely focused on economic issues. This concern is also evident in invigorated efforts to raise the minimum wage, expand paid leave, and strengthen the collective bargaining power of workers. These issues resonate with nearly every worker, because wages are at the heart of the American dream. Money earned from work is the main source of income for most American households. This is the money Americans use to meet basic living expenses and to save for down payment on a home, college tuition, or retirement. This is especially true for African American and Latino workers, who have less inherited wealth and rely almost exclusively on their paychecks to support themselves and their families. Concern over wage inequality is also fully justified by the data. Since 1979, wages for the vast majority of workers—regardless of gender, race or ethnicity—have been stagnant or declining.
CNBC
February 26, 2016
As I note in my new book, “Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice,” one of the dark stains on the Obama legacy is the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of corporate education reform, which is characterized by high-stakes standardized testing, charter schools, school closures, attacks on teachers unions, and others. This has been lavishly funded by Wall Street financiers, foundations and billionaires. In 2013, the Economic Policy Institute’s Broader, Bolder Approach to Education published a report concluding that market-oriented reforms “delivered few benefits” and “often harm the students they purport to help.”
Salon
February 26, 2016
When the AFL-CIO canvassed the Rust Belt cities of Cleveland and Pittsburgh, the researchers found that Republicans and some Democrats in the traditional labor strongholds were drifting toward the golden-haired Manhattan real estate icon. The key factor? Economic insecurity. “It’s the first time within the Republican field that someone has reached out with an economic message that resonates with these voters,” said Robert E. Scott of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. At times, Scott said, that means scapegoating immigrants and foreigners. “But frankly, some of those issues are related to trade and the insecurities of the working class,” Scott said. Recently published studies have found that as many as 2 million American manufacturing jobs have been lost to China since 2000. “Growing trade deficits are the single largest cause of the elimination of jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector, and the number one culprit is China,” Scott said. In the past two decades, the trade deficit with China has increased more than tenfold.
International Business Times
February 26, 2016
Most recently, Walmart heir Alice Walton donated $353,000 to the “Hillary Victory Fund,” which is backing her presidential run, a Walmart lobbyist held a Mexico fundraiser for her and the consulting firm of her campaign’s top strategist lists Walmart as a client. Before that, Clinton was a member of Walmart’s board in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As PBS Frontline documented, that was when Walmart began offshoring its supply chain to China. A recent study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that Walmart’s shift to China ended up eliminating more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States.
International Business Times
February 26, 2016
The figure below plots the 20th-percentile wage for blacks in recent years, using data from the Economic Policy Institute (this is a good proxy for low-wage work; 80 percent of blacks earn more while 20 percent earn less). In 2015, as the tightening job market finally gave them a smidgen of bargaining power, these workers’ wages were finally starting to trend up (low inflation helped, too).
The Washington Post
February 25, 2016