Districts across the country struggle to find drivers, with 12.2% fewer school bus drivers on the road in September of 2024 compared to five years prior, according to a study published in the Economic Policy Institute.
Canton Repository
July 28, 2025
Meanwhile, nonpartisan think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute say Initiative 82 should remain and, in a recent report, said, “There is little evidence that increasing tipped wages is hurting the DC restaurant industry.” The report also highlighted that the number of restaurants in Washington, D.C. has grown since the implementation of Initiative-82.
WUSA 9
July 28, 2025
For more details, we turn to Ben Zipperer, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, based in Washington, DC. According to his research, ICE arrests, detentions and deportations of noncitizen workers would also harm U.S.-born workers, an impact that has yet to appear on the public radar screen.
“Immigrant workers make up a substantial part of the workforce in the United States: 1 in 5 workers is an immigrant, and about half of immigrants are noncitizens,” according to Zipperer. “Because of their sizable presence in the workforce, large-scale attempts to remove them will lead to extensive employment losses for foreign-born workers. What is less apparent, however, is the impact that arrests, detentions, and deportations of immigrants will have on millions of U.S.-born workers who will lose their jobs. The widespread job losses for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers will undercut the narrative that abruptly removing immigrants will somehow magically increase employment opportunities for U.S.-born workers.”
Counterpunch
July 28, 2025
We’ve all been there. Maybe it’s when you grab a coffee in the morning or when you finish up a dinner out with friends. Maybe it’s when you least expect it, like at the merch table at a concert. You tap your card, only to be confronted with the dreaded tip screen. There’s a lot of talk about how much to tip and if you even should tip (more on that later), but why do we add gratuity in America in the first place?
Nina Mast has the answer. She’s an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, DC. The point of the tip is to make up the difference between the minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage. “The tipped minimum wage is the lower minimum wage that employers can pay tipped workers with the expectation that tips will bring their pay up to the regular minimum wage rate,” she says. “Under federal law, the tipped minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. So tipped workers need to earn an additional $5.12 in tips to bring them up to the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour.”
On this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast, we find out how this system began and why we still have it.
Vox Explain It To Me Podcast
July 28, 2025
The New Yorker
July 28, 2025
Nationally, more than 14 million workers are paid less than $15 per hour, including overtime, tips and commissions, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Low Wage Workforce Tracker. Nearly 27 million make less than $17.
The Triangle Tribune
July 24, 2025
A LendingTree survey found that the city has more Black-owned businesses than anywhere else in the country. But that doesn’t mean economic equity has been achieved. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Black residents in Atlanta face an unemployment rate of 5 percent, nearly double the 2.6 percent rate for white residents.
Blavity
July 24, 2025
- The Economic Policy institute estimates that $102,734 is the income level required for an adequate standard of living. That income translates to $11,420 in combined federal and state income taxes in the Fresno metro area.
The Sun Joaquin Valley Sun
July 24, 2025
It’s an especially compelling idea when you consider that most working Americans are struggling to get by, while CEOs were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker in 2020, according to the Economic Policy Institute. But what would happen if this model were scaled up, not just to one business, but to the entire U.S. economy?
GO Banking Rates
July 24, 2025