The practice allows firms to avoid paying payroll taxes or offering employer benefits, such as a minimum wage or health insurance. And it can make life harder for workers who already may be struggling to make ends meet, said Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
August 12, 2015
According to one frequently cited study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO earned 30 times the typical worker in 1978; today, that ratio is 303 to 1. As executive pay spirals, what companies are getting in exchange isn’t terribly clear.
Boston Globe
August 12, 2015
The pay gap between executives and average employees has been growing at an alarming rate. The Economic Policy Institute found that the top 350 U.S. companies pay their CEOs about 300 times what they pay the typical worker, an extraordinary jump since 1978, when the ratio was 30 to 1. Executive pay grew 997 percent between 1978 and 2014, while average employees’ pay grew only 11 percent.
Philadelphia Inquirer
August 12, 2015
According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay grew 997 percent between 1978 and 2014. While the CEO pay ratio disclosure alone will not resolve income inequality in this country, it can help identify a huge source of the problem and inform how the U.S. wants to shape compensation in corporate America going forward.
Detroit News
August 12, 2015
The black unemployment rate reached a low this year for the first time since the start of the Great Recession. Hold the applause. “The second quarter of 2015 was when the black unemployment rate got below 10 percent for the first time in about eight years,” said Valerie Rawlston Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C. She analyzed Labor Department Data looking at employment trends by race by quarter from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of this year, which ended in June. The recession official ran from December 2007 to June 2009.) For the second quart of this year, the black unemployment rate nationally was 9.5 percent. The overall unemployment rate was 5.3 percent.
The most recent quarterly numbers mean the black unemployment rate was 1.1 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of 2007, when it was 8.4 percent. Wilson said being below 10 percent meets “one benchmark, but 9.5 percent still isn’t a great unemployment rate.” She said not only was the national black unemployment rate not back to it pre-recession level; the black rate was furthest from its pre-recession level than for any racial or ethnic group.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
August 12, 2015
A May 2015 Economic Policy Institute report found that temporary legal guest-workers are just as likely to be subjected to low wages as undocumented workers. H-2 visa holders “are tied to [individuals’] employers, therefore they cannot change employers or jobs while working in the U.S,” Lauren Apgar, the EPI study author, said during a panel in May.
Think Progress
August 12, 2015
The campaign is returning this year with a more concrete agenda and the backing of a growing number of established left-leaning academics and think tanks, including the Roosevelt Institute, the AFL-CIO and the Economic Policy Institute. The campaign is led by the Center for Popular Democracy.
The Washington Post
August 11, 2015
But the second theory argues that the current state of things is the new normal, says Josh Bivens, the research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute. The case for that, he says, is that “there did seem to be deceleration of productivity growth even before the great recession hit.” Bivens says if the federal reserve agrees with the “new normal” theory, it could raise interest rates quicker. But, if the “business investment” theory prevails, to which he also subscribes, “It’s just one more problem that will be solved by getting the economy back to full health. The best way to ensure it gets back to full health is to keep interest rates low.”
Marketplace
August 11, 2015
Although the progressive groups’ petition does not explicitly demand that the Fed wait for a specific wage growth figure before raising interest rates, the Fed Up campaign and its partners have largely coalesced around a wage growth target of 3.5 to 4 percent. The liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which is participating in the new petition campaign, estimates that with that type of wage growth, price inflation will not “significantly exceed” the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target.
The Huffington Post
August 11, 2015
The move comes as the U.S. Labor Department steps up its enforcement of classification rules. Last year, it forced companies to pay $79 million in back wages to 109,000 workers in the janitorial, temporary help, food services, day care and hotel industries. The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, estimated that 10 percent to 20 percent of employers misclassify at least one worker.
The Associated Press
August 11, 2015