In the absence of action on a national scale, a number of states and localities have made their own moves. Last year 11 states and the District of Columbia lifted their minimum wages through legislation, and 11 states increased them via regular indexing to inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington DC think-tank.
Financial Times
March 29, 2016
The job market can be a tough place, particularly for new college graduates. While the unemployment rate for new grads (age 21 to 24) has dropped — falling to 7.2 percent in 2014 from 9.9 percent in 2011—according to the Economic Policy Institute, it remains significantly elevated, particularly as new graduates are forced to contend with those from the previous six years who are still searching for positions.
CNBC
March 29, 2016
Robert E. Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank critical of free-trade deals, estimates these deficits with Mexico alone have cost 850,000 Americans their jobs. This, in turn, has a “chilling effect,” Scott said. “It actually causes wage losses for everybody who doesn’t have a college degree.” After accounting for inflation, hourly pay at U.S. factories has been stagnant since the early 1970s.
Bloomberg
March 29, 2016
“What we see in those states is that the poverty rate among tipped workers is dramatically lower than in the states where they’re getting $2.13 per hour as their base wage,” David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute said.
PBS News Hour
March 29, 2016
From other research, we know two important facts about black public sector workers: 1) Black workers make up a disproportionate share of the public sector workforce; and 2) Black public employees were more likely than other public employees to lose their jobs during the Great Recession. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute finds that the reduction in state and local public employment disproportionately affected African-Americans.
U.S. News & World Report
March 29, 2016
A new analysis underlines that point, showing that state laws that increase the minimum wage help people at the bottom of the income ladder, even when they’re making slightly more than the minimum wage. Those people at the very bottom? Nearly 60 percent of them are women — and they are disproportionately women of color.
The analysis, published Wednesday by Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, looks at the income of the 10th percentile of American workers — that is, the people who earn less than 90 percent of workers in the U.S. — in every state. In 2015, wages for that bottom 10th percentile went up everywhere, but they went up more in the 22 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that increased minimum wages than they did in the other 28 states. And they went up the most for women who live in those states.
The Huffington Post
March 29, 2016
There is still a pay gap among male and female business owners, too. Women-owned businesses earn only about 25 cents for every dollar that male-owned businesses do, according to 2015 data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Christian Science Monitor
March 29, 2016
According to a 2009 survey of union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, “workers were forced to attend anti-union one-on-one sessions with a supervisor at least weekly in two-thirds of elections, … employers used supervisor one-on-one meetings to interrogate workers about who they or other workers supported, and in 54% used such sessions to threaten workers.” That’s not all. “Employers threatened to close the plant in 57% of elections, discharged workers in 34%, and threatened to cut wages and benefits in 47% of elections.”
Los Angeles Times
March 24, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute reports that in 2012, state departments of labor recovered $172 million for workers, state attorneys general recovered $14 million and private attorneys recovered $467 million in wage and hour class action lawsuits.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
March 24, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute is an economic research group located in Washington, D.C., and it concluded in a 1999 study that nearly 40 percent of the minimum wage earners in the United States are working parents. To go even further, nearly 33 percent of the minimum wage earners are married couple raising children. Without a minimum wage, these workers may be forced to work for less money.
Houston Chronicle
March 24, 2016