So AOL Jobs decided to write up a second budget for a McDonald’s employee who is a single parent with one child living in Newaygo County, Michigan, which has the average cost of living for the country. The income numbers are the same, but the expenses are based on the “budget calculator” from the liberal think tank the Economic Policy Institute, excluding tax, but with the original budget’s ambitious $100 of monthly savings.
As you can see below, our McDonald’s employee with a second job and one child will go into $1,548 of debt each month, or $51.60 a day.
AOL Jobs
July 22, 2013
The high number of part-time workers is “primarily an issue of labor demand: we have a weak economy,” said Elise Gould, director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, which receives about a quarter of its funding from labor unions.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
July 22, 2013
If you’re like most of us, you don’t have profit money from large corporations flowing into your bank account like a fire hose. But some do — they make up a tiny percentage of our country, but they have most of the power. There are, however, ways to fix that.
I know — nothing new there, right? What is new is a fantastic interactive website where you can start to figure out what happened, why it happened, and how we can fix it. Check it out: Inequality.Is.
Upworthy
July 19, 2013
So AOL Jobs decided to write up a second budget for a McDonald’s employee who is a single parent with one child living in Newaygo County, Mich., which has the average cost of living for the country. The income numbers are the same, but the expenses are based on the “budget calculator” from the liberal think tank the Economic Policy Institute, excluding tax, but with the original budget’s ambitious $100 of monthly savings.
As you can see below, our McDonald’s employee with a second job and one child will go into $1,548 of debt each month, or $51.60 a day.
AOL Jobs
July 19, 2013
Senate passage of immigration reform legislation, S 744, begs the question: Is it better than current law? Probably, but the answer could change.
Parts of the bill do improve both the immigration system and the labor market. New rules limit abuses of internationally recruited workers, make union organizing easier and protect immigrants from employer retaliation. S 744 also prioritizes permanent immigrants with skills over family connections and creates a Bureau of Immigration and Labor Market Research that would make the system more data-driven. And regularizing unauthorized migrants would bring exploitable workers and their families out of the shadows, allowing them to assert their rights and bargain collectively. Both immigrants and Americans would benefit as wages rise, and law-abiding employers would no longer have to compete in a race to the bottom.
Roll Call
July 19, 2013
On average, Wal-Mart pays its workers $12.67 an hour — which means that a huge number of its 1.4 million U.S. employees make a good deal less than that. By paying so little, the Bentonville behemoth compels thousands of its employees to use food stamps to feed their families and Medicaid to pay their doctor bills. It compels taxpayers to pick up a tab that wouldn’t even exist if the company paid its workers enough to get them out of poverty.
The Washington Post
July 19, 2013
The Economic Policy Institute posted a blog this week comparing the federal minimum wage to productivity rates. According to the blog, which also contained a chart based on figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity growth since 1968, the wage would be $18.67 per hour. And if median wages had tracked productivity increases, it would be $28.42 instead of closer to $16 today
Sacramento Business Journal
July 16, 2013
“I’m most worried about this in places like government, where it’s important to have people representing different income brackets,” said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
“But the only people who have the experience to get a job on Capital Hill are the people who can afford it — the people whose parents were able to support them through their unpaid internships. That’s very bad for our democracy.”
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
July 16, 2013
The basic premise is that Americans don’t need things like food stamps or the minimum wage to help them, because they’re already so much better off than poor people in the world around them. The Economic Policy Institute can’t help but disagree. Its Family Budget Calculator notes that a family of three would require an income of $45,000 a year to cover basic needs in Simpson County, Miss., the U.S. region with the lowest cost of living for a family of that size.
MSN Money
July 16, 2013
It takes $88,615 per year. That’s how much money a new report by the Economic Policy Institute suggests a family of four (two parents and two kids) would need to live comfortably in this area.
EPI looked at a number of factors, including housing, food, transportation, child care, health care, other necessities and taxes. When you add all that up, the District (including the surrounding suburbs in Maryland and Virginia) ranks second in the nation, just behind New York City ($93,502). Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee round out the top five, respectively. The cheapest place for a family of four: Marshall County, Miss., where the cost is almost half that at $48,144.
NBC News
July 16, 2013