According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, the majority of Americans have faced wage stagnation for the past 35 years, and it is a major factor the rise of family income stagnation and income inequality. Furthermore, the failure of wages to grow highlights gender and racial wage gaps.
The Christian Science Monitor
July 24, 2015
Despite these tales of success, the current economy is one of the least promising for young workers. A May 2015 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that college graduates this year earn wages 2.5 percent less than what graduates earned in 2000. Furthermore, the unemployment rate for young college grads is 7.2 percent, and the underemployment rate, or rate of graduates working jobs they are overqualified for, is 14.9 percent. So is becoming a millionaire in today’s economy a one-in-a-million chance for young people? Some economic experts say it is. “The economy is a difficult place for them right now, and it is hard for them just to get by, let alone accumulate wealth,” says Alyssa Davis, an Economy Policy Institute research assistant and co-author of the report.
U.S. News & World Report
July 24, 2015
Since the start of 2014, 14 states have boosted their hourly rate, and the effective minimum wage has increased in 26 states and the District of Columbia. The minimum pay tops the federal mandate in 29 U.S. states. The numbers come from the Economic Policy Institute, which this week published an interactive map that shows where things stood as of July 10.
CBS Moneywatch
July 24, 2015
To identify where these expensive places are, FindTheHome crunched the numbers to find the metro areas in the country with the highest monthly cost of living for a family of four, where both parents are employed and file federal income taxes jointly. The data comes from the most recent 2013 Economic Policy Institute (EPI) numbers, adjusted for inflation to 2015 dollars.
Houston Chronicle
July 24, 2015
Average pay for a big-company CEOs is $16.3 million, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. In 2014, that was 303 times what the typical worker earned. The CEO-to-worker gap today isn’t the highest ever (in 2007 it was 345-to-1) but it has exploded since 1978, the point at which income inequality in the United States generally started to worsen.
Yahoo Finance
July 24, 2015
New York ranks among the top 10 states for its minimum wage, but factor in the cost of living, and it falls to the bottom 10. West Virginia’s middle-of-the-pack minimum wage, on the other hand, is actually fairly valuable compared with other states, when considering prices. “Even in some states that have enacted higher minimum wages most recently, the relative value of those is still quite low when you’ve made this adjustment,” said David Cooper, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, which often advocates for pro-labor policies. The measure factors in goods, housing and other services, with housing showing a much wider gap between extremes than the other categories. “That is the single largest driver when it comes to regional price differences, so policymakers wanting to do something about this or sensitive to these things need to look at what housing policies look like in these regions,” Cooper said.
The Washington Post
July 23, 2015
Historically, the poverty rate has tracked the overall economy, but that’s no longer true. The period between the 2001 and 2007 recessions was the first expansionary business cycle on record in which the poverty rate increased, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Census Bureau data.
Harper's Magazine
July 23, 2015
But even this number grossly underestimates what families need to get by, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator. A single parent with three kids living in El Paso, Texas, for example, would need to earn $68,393 to live comfortably and cover the basic expenses like housing, food, transportation, healthcare, and childcare. In Spokane, Wash., that number is $72,050. In Chattanooga, Tenn., it’s $63,592. In Rochester, New York, a single parent raising three kids needs to bring in $102,417.
Fusion
July 23, 2015
An increasing number of American children from low-income backgrounds are coming to kindergarten lagging in both academic and non-cognitive skills critical to educational success, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. As the report states: “Such early-in-life inequalities point to the need for substantial interventions to reduce them, including early educational interventions, to ensure that children arrive in kindergarten ready to learn and for compensatory policies to support these children throughout the school years (from kindergarten through 12th grade).”
The Washington Post
July 22, 2015
That increase testifies to how little the economic recovery has been felt in America’s poorest households. While the top 1% of wage earners saw their real incomes grow by 34.7% in the post-recession years, hourly wages for the vast majority of workers fell over the same period, according to data from Berkley economist Emmanuel Saez and the Economic Policy Institute.
MSNBC.com
July 22, 2015