Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said at the press conference that the economic impact of an increase to the federal minimum wage is one of the most-studied subjects in economics.
“The weight of that evidence shows that (when the) minimum wage increases, they raise the wages of our lowest wage-workers, they reduce inequality, they reduce poverty, they reduce child poverty, they reduce gender wage gaps, they reduce racial wage gaps because Black and brown workers, due to the broad impacts of structural racism on our labor markets, are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest-wage jobs,” Shierholz said.
New Jersey Monitor
May 5, 2023
“Haven’t wages for low-wage workers naturally grown in the tight labor markets of the pandemic recovery?” asked Heidi Shierholz, the former chief economist for the Department of Labor.
“Yes, they have,” she said. “But so has the cost of living.”
ABC News
May 5, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank, argues the H-1B program is exploitive and needs to be reformed because employers use it to trade highly paid US workers for lower paid foreign workers. The group said the top 30 H-1B employers hired about 34,000 H-1B workers in 2022 while laying off about 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023.
“Rather than turning to the H-1B program as a last resort when US workers cannot be found, most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer,” EPI said in a blog post recently. “This is evidenced by government data showing that technology companies continue to hire H-1B workers in large numbers while significantly reducing the sizes of their workforces.”
The Register
May 5, 2023
While child labor exploitation is on the rise, Republican lawmakers across America are simultaneously pushing to weaken child labor laws. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in 2023, bills proposing to weaken protections against child labor have already been introduced in seven states: Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Popular Information
May 5, 2023
Several states, including Minnesota and Missouri, have also recently introduced youth employment bills that extend work hours for teens, according to the Economic Policy Institute. New Jersey and New Hampshire enacted such laws last year.
CNN
May 5, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, in the past two years, 10 states have introduced or passed laws that have weakened child labor laws. The 10 states include Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
News Nation Now
May 5, 2023
These pay increases would help districts recruit and retain staff, the bill said, citing an Economic Policy Institute report that found teachers face a “wage penalty” compared to professionals in other fields who have similar education backgrounds.
K-12 Dive
May 5, 2023
In the U.S., labor strikes generally are up 50% between 2021 and 2022, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Klowden says this is in part because of the push to maintain the economy by bringing people back to work quickly, particular essential workers, even before people were able to feel comfortable and safe at work.
LAist
May 5, 2023
About 60 million workers are subject to forced arbitration, according to a 2018 report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Fortune
May 5, 2023
A recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that in states where the federal minimum wage prevails ― many of them in the South ― 19% of workers are earning less than $15 per hour. In the 30 states that have set a higher minimum wage than the federal rate, that figure drops to 13%.
Huffpost
May 5, 2023
Proponents of higher minimum wages say that the federal threshold is so low that it results in poverty for many families. The federal minimum wage has lost nearly 30% of its purchasing power since it was last hiked in 2009, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Examiner
May 5, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said the effect of minimum wage increases was one of the most studied aspects of her discipline.
They had been shown time and again to reduce inequality, poverty and gender and racial wage gaps, she said, while also reducing child abuse, teen pregnancy, suicides and reoffending rates — all without causing substantial job losses.
“When you raise the minimum wage, it makes our economy stronger,” she told reporters. “The policies of the last four-plus decades that have increased inequality… have also slowed overall economic growth.”
Barron’s
May 5, 2023
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is planning to make an announcement (with no additional details provided) at 11 a.m. on minimum wage. The chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will be joined by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry, and Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz during the announcement.
Politico
May 5, 2023
Even though job openings at U.S. companies also fell in March, Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said, “the more persuasive signs of [economic] cooling are coming from rising layoffs.”
CFO
May 5, 2023
The median white family has $188,200 in retirement savings, compared to $36,000 for Hispanics, and just $25,000 for Blacks, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Employee Benefit News
May 5, 2023
Against this legislative drive, surveys show an already alarming surge in child labor violations. The number of children employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% in the last year and by 283% since 2015, from 1,012 reported cases of children working in violation of child labor laws to 3,876 in 2022, according to a March 2023 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
“I think what we’re seeing in terms of the state push right now should be viewed as the latest multi-industry push to really wipe out regulation of child labor, not in one fell swoop, but that’s always sort of the end goal of the various pushes coming all at the same time,” said Jennifer Sherer, senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Analysis and Research Network (Earn) Worker Power Project, and author of the EPI report.
The Guardian
May 5, 2023
Both violations of child labor laws and proposals to roll back child labor protections are on the rise across the country, according to a March 2023 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
At least 10 states have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years. And the number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37 percent in the last year, according to the report.
The Quad-City Times
May 5, 2023
In a blog post earlier this week, Josh Bivens and Samantha Sanders of the Economic Policy Institute dismissed as “laughable” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) claim that the Republican proposal “would put the United States on a path to ‘fiscal responsibility’ and lower inflation.
“The biggest driver of deficits for the last 20 years has been a steady trend toward ever-larger tax cuts for corporations and the richest U.S. households,” Bivens and Sanders wrote. “No one who actually wants to reduce the federal deficit should be looking to do that on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.”
Common Dreams
May 5, 2023
According to an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, between 2001 and 2021, the share of 16- to 19-year-olds not working increased by 22.4 percent, which the think tank said is “almost entirely explained” by the higher share of young people prioritizing education during those years.
VOX
May 5, 2023
“I get by because my sixteen-year-old son and I live with my parents, retired nurses who own their home,” Baker says. “Although I supplement my earnings in the insurance industry by working as a tutor of Latin and a translator of French, it is impossible for me to take vacations or to save for my son’s college education or a master’s degree that would enable me to land a job in a better-paying industry.”
Baker’s experience is common, says Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank that studies the impact of economic trends on workers.
“Unfortunately, low wages are widespread throughout the labor market,” he tells The Progressive. “It is not just a problem of a teenager working after school to earn spending money, but an enormous burden for adults working two or three jobs for substandard wages that barely keep food on the table.”
The Progressive Magazine
May 5, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reports since 2009 the minimum wage has lost 27% of its purchasing power due to cost of living increases. The Institute adds, 23 states and Washington D.C. raised state minimum wage in 2023, including Sanders’ own Vermont. Starting January 1, 2023, Vermont raised its state minimum wage to $13.18 per hour. That is an increase of $0.63 from the previous minimum wage of $12.55.
Gray TV
May 5, 2023
Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me that there is hope. According to his research, while corporate profits’ contribution to inflation is still outsized, accounting for a third of inflation at the end of 2022, it’s finally normalizing — albeit at an excruciatingly slow pace.
“All this has definitely taken longer than I thought it would,” he wrote to me.
Business Insider
May 5, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that, as of January 2023, 21 million workers still make less than $15 an hour. Workers in states that still adhere to the federal minimum wage are 46% more likely to make under $15 an hour, according to EPI, showcasing the power that the federal standard still holds.
Business Insider
May 5, 2023
The CBPP and other policy groups are warning that — unless the Fed stops raising interest rates—the already shaky economy is likely to plunge into recession, putting millions of people out of work. Further rate hikes “pose a dire threat to what could be an excellent 2023 for the economic prospects of America’s working families,” Josh Bivens, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said in a blog post.
Unbossed with Nina Turner
May 5, 2023
Additionally, a report by the Economic Policy Institute found that in 33 states and the District of Columbia, the cost of center-based care for an infant exceeds the cost of in-state tuition at a public four-year college.
WFLA-TV (Florida)
May 5, 2023
A few weeks after Sanders’ hearing, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a study that found: “Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation.”
EPI’s chief economist Josh Bivens wrote that more than half of companies’ price increases since the start of the pandemic “can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8 percent of this increase,” adding: “This is not normal.”
The EPI analysis should have been definitive — but the corporate pundit class chose to ignore it.
The Lever
May 5, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Department of Labor and current head of the think tank Economic Policy Institute, said the labor market isn’t too hot.
“Wage growth is generally trending down,” Shierholz tweeted Friday.5 “We can absolutely sustain the kind of labor market tightness we are seeing today, if the Fed doesn’t stand in the way (or hasn’t already).”
Investopedia
May 5, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute found that in states with a strong union presence, incomes are higher and more people have health insurance. Critically, these states also have fewer voter restrictions, greater civic engagement, less racial resentment, and increased support among white workers for policies that benefit Black people.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
May 5, 2023
Lawmakers across eight states — including Minnesota and Missouri — have bills in progress that weaken youth labor laws, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.
CBS News
May 5, 2023