At the same time, there’s much national debate about what is a “living wage,” or enough money for a worker to make in order to make ends meet. Most retail workers already make more than the federal minimum wage but not much more. In fact, more than half of retail workers make $10 or less, according to David Cooper of The Economic Policy Institute.
Associated Press
February 26, 2015
Wages are stagnant, and in fact, of all educational groups, workers with bachelor’s and advanced degrees saw the largest decline in real wages between 2013 and 2014, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
PBS News Hour
February 26, 2015
One characteristic of America’s slow economic recovery is the extraordinary number of people who have fallen into the ranks of the long-term unemployed, those unable to find jobs for 27 weeks or more. An estimated 3.4 million fit this description, by the Economic Policy Institute’s measure.
The Washington Post
February 25, 2015
Though productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at a much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Atlantic
February 25, 2015
Fifteen million Americans are still stuck in the low wage range between $7.25 and $10 according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Money
February 24, 2015
The trends mirror those in the country at large, where labor has similarly stumbled. Real hourly wages fell for almost everyone nationwide in 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute, except for the low-wage sector, bolstered by minimum wage increases at the state and local level.
Salon
February 24, 2015
With the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign underway and millions of Americans still hurting financially, both parties are looking for ways to address wage stagnation. That’s the good news. The bad news is that both parties are offering tax cuts as a solution. What has hurt workers’ paychecks is not what the government takes out, but what their employers no longer put in — a dynamic that tax cuts cannot eliminate. Wage stagnation is a decades-long phenomenon. Between 1979 and 2014, while the gross domestic product grew 150 percent and productivity grew 75 percent, the inflation-adjusted hourly wage of the median worker rose just 5.6 percent — less than 0.2 percent a year. And since 2002, the bottom 80 percent of wage earners, including both male and female college graduates, have actually seen their wages stagnate or fall. At the same time, taxation does not explain why middle-income families are having a harder time making ends meet, even as they increase their education and become ever more productive. According to the latest Congressional Budget Office data, the middle 60 percent of families paid just 3.2 percent of their income in federal income taxes in 2011, less than half what they paid in 1979.
The New York Times
February 23, 2015
On Thursday, the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, published a report showing that wages haven’t risen. “The stagnation of hourly wages is the most important economic issue facing most American families, and most of our key economic challenges hinge on whether or not hourly wages for the vast majority grow,” the author, Elise Gould, wrote.
The New Yorker
February 23, 2015
Josh Bivens, research and policy director at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said Wal-Mart’s move also reduces the pressure on other retailers to keep labor costs at rock-bottom levels. “It at least takes away the excuse from other firms that ‘We’d like to raise wages, but we can’t because we have to compete with Wal-Mart,'” Bivens said. “It could possibly give some competitive breathing space to other retailers to raise wages.”
Associated Press
February 23, 2015
American wages, actually across the wage distribution, fell or stagnated in 2013 and 2014, according to a report released Thursday from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
As the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould reported Thursday, among all educational categories, the greatest real wage losses between 2013 and 2014 were observed among those with bachelor’s and advanced degrees. “If demand for high-skilled workers were driving wage inequality, we would expect to see these workers’ wages increasing, or at the very least, falling less than their low-skilled counterparts.” But the demand is dwindling — even for them.
PBS News Hour
February 23, 2015