Media clips
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According to a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, this is life for about 17 percent of the labor force. So called “just-in-time scheduling” is far more common for those who work for hourly wages or are part-time employees, or both. Part-time workers—more than six million Americans—are more than twice as likely to have unpredictable hours than full-time employees.
The Atlantic April 16, 2015 -
That language struck a chord with members of the alliance. As part of a new five-year plan, the organization is urging donors to contribute to an expanded suite of advocacy groups and think tanks devoted to economic inequality including Americans for Financial Reform, the Economic Policy Institute and the National Employment Law Project.
The Washington Post April 16, 2015 -
The Clinton campaign said she was relying on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, which found that at the top 350 U.S. firms, in terms of sales, average chief executive compensation in 2013 was $15.2 million. It concluded that this was 295.9 times higher than the average compensation of workers at those companies, which was a decline from a peak of 383.4-to-1 in 2000 but far higher than a 20-to-1 ratio in 1965.
So how does the organization come up with this ratio?
EPI has published a fairly detailed description of its methodology. For chief executives, it originally used an annual survey published by the Wall Street Journal, and then later switched to buying the information –at a cost of $10,000 a year, according EPI president Lawrence Mishel—from Compustat, a division of Standard & Poor’s. The database includes data on the compensation of the companies in the S&P 1500 Index dating back to 1992, but Mishel says they focus on the top 350 in order to remain consistent with the WSJ data going back to the 1960s.
The Washington Post April 16, 2015 -
Traditionally, the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party has emphasized promoting “opportunity” over reducing inequality. As Lawrence Mishel, the president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, pointed out in a blog post last week, that approach has sometimes enabled centrist Democrats to “avoid confronting the top 1 percent’s capture of the lion’s share of income growth. After all, addressing runaway executive pay and a runaway financial sector—the main causes of the top 1 percent’s income gains—smacks of redistribution; and besides, those folks are their donor base.” With Hillary and her staff about to hit up hedge-fund managers, investment bankers, tech moguls, and other rich folks for hefty campaign contributions, the suspicion lingers that, when it comes down to it, her campaign will punt, rather than directly confront, the entrenched problems of income and wealth inequality.
The New Yorker April 14, 2015 -
For example, recent research by the Economic Policy Institute shows that men still outearn women at every rung of the income ladder. The higher up the ladder, the bigger the gap. In 2014, women in the 95th percentile of female earners made 79 percent of wages for men at the 95th percentile, while women in the lowest 10th percentile made 91 cents for each $1 earned by their male counterparts.
The New York Times April 14, 2015 -
Last week, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute released a report on irregular scheduling. It found that 17 percent of the U.S. workforce has “unstable work shift schedules” of some kind, whether due to on-call work schedules or rotating shifts. The report suggests the actual percentage may be higher.
“Just to get even one hour paid for if someone is sent home before their shift time ends or if they show and there’s no work at all, which I think is the most common complain, that would get employers to reconsider those kind of practices,” said Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor-employment relations at Penn State University and the author of the EPI report.
The New Republic April 14, 2015 -
In 1965, CEOs earned about 20 times what a typical worker brought home, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. In 2013, CEO compensation was nearly 300 times the pay of the average worker, the EPI study said.
Reuters April 14, 2015 -
Clinton can call on a wide range of experts, and a number of detailed proposals that Democratic think tanks, such as the centrist Center for American Progress and the liberal Economic Policy Institute have laid out in recent reports. The ideas range from raising the minimum wage and encouraging the growth of trade unions, to changing the tax code and investing in infrastructure.
The New Yorker April 13, 2015 -
It’s well known that the employment outlook for young workers is dismal: a report released in May, 2014, by the Economic Policy Institute, for example, pointed out that the unemployment rate for those under the age of twenty-five in 2013 was two-thirds as high as the general rate, and the underemployment rate (which measures skilled workers performing in low-paying or low-skill jobs, and part-time workers who would rather be full-time) nearly four-fifths as high as the rate for all workers.
The New Yorker April 13, 2015 -
Academic research shows that the worker-to-C.E.O. gulf has been widening. According to a 2014 study by Alyssa Davis and Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning advocacy group in Washington with a reputation for rigorous studies, chief executive pay as a multiple of the typical worker’s pay rocketed from an average of 20 times in 1965 to 295.9 in 2013.
The New York Times April 13, 2015