The Washington Post
April 23, 2015
The issue of low wage workers facing erratic work scheduling has taken on more national prominence in recent years. An April study from the Economic Policy Institute found that about 17 percent of the workforce is saddled with “unstable” work shift schedules.
New York Observer
April 23, 2015
The issue of low wage workers facing erratic work scheduling has taken on more national prominence in recent years. An April study from the Economic Policy Institute found that about 17 percent of the workforce is saddled with “unstable” work shift schedules.
MSNBC.com
April 23, 2015
On top of that, the White House and Congress are pushing to “fast-track” the TTP in ways that limit debate and restrict lawmakers from shaping the agreement in ways that address concerns regarding its impact. “A lot of people think the only people who have to be concerned about the downsides are those who will be directly replaced by imports,” Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told CBS MoneyWatch. “People say, ‘Well, it’s not that many — the manufacturing sector bears the brunt,’ and that’s actually wrong. Landscapers and waitresses might not be displaced by imports, but their wages suffer because they are competing with those who were displaced.”
Those on the losing end of the deal will likely be workers without college degrees, who represent 70 percent of the U.S. workforce, EPI said. In a research paper about the TPP, Bivens calculated that expanded trade overall has lowered wages for a non-college-educated worker by about $1,800 annually.
CBS News Moneywatch
April 23, 2015
But data show that depending on where people live, how many children they have and what their health care needs are, even $75,000 might not be enough to cover the bills. Nevermind having money left over to save for college or retirement or an emergency. “Often times when you think about the middle class you think about people who are able to invest in their future — being able to save for a rainy day or if somebody loses a job in your family, being able to cover that,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “$75,000, depending on where you’re living, may not allow you to make that kind of investment.”
In New York City, for example, a family of four with two parents and two children would need an annual salary of $94,676 to pay for basic living expenses like housing, food and transportation, according to a budget calculator from the Economic Policy Institute based on 2013 prices. In Washington, they need $89,643 to live. Those figures don’t include savings.
The Washington Post
April 22, 2015
There is such a thing as a good trade agreement, though it’s barely conceivable that Obama and Congress could negotiate one. We could imagine, for example, something that did away with tax havens for corporate profits. (For a detailed analysis of this, see this paper from the Economic Policy Institute.)
The New York Times
April 22, 2015
Elise Gould, a labor economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, said the phenomena of workers cobbling together jobs to get to a 40-hour work week is a sign of the weakness of the economy. “We’re in a place where the employers hold all the cards. A place where workers can’t get full-time jobs if they want them,” she said. Even the job numbers for March were weak, Gould said, with just 126,000 jobs added to the national economy. In an environment where there are still nearly twice as many job seekers as there are jobs, businesses have little incentive to accommodate workers with better hours or schedules. “That’s why people are trying to piece together work still.”
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
April 22, 2015
The inconvenience and harm to the employee in these situations has been well documented, for example, in a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. In all, 17 percent of the U.S. workforce faces the challenges of unstable schedules, irregular hours or rotating shifts that make it impossible to establish a consistent routine.
U.S. News & World Report
April 22, 2015
The Economic Policy Institute has calculated that raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour, as the White House has recommended, would benefit workers who are on average 35 years old. Over a third are 40 or older. Most work their low-paying jobs full time, and on average earn half of their family’s income.
PolicyMic
April 22, 2015
The overtime cutoff salary of $23,660 now only covers 11 percent of salaried workers compared with 65 percent in 1975, according to an analysis by Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a research group partly funded by labor unions.
Bloomberg
April 22, 2015