Research and testimony cited by the Economic Policy Institute point to examples in other states that have already extended overtime access and minimum wage parity to farmworkers, and conclude that such changes are feasible. EPI and national farmworker advocacy organizations lay out the long history of these exemptions and track recent rounds of state-level reform efforts.
Hoodline
June 15, 2026
Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute finds that corporations can negotiate quickly when they want to: For example, Starbucks has made its workers wait four and a half years, and counting, for a first union contract, but managed to negotiate a merger with Teavana in just 67 days. Amazon has made its workers wait 498 days for a contract so far but completed its blockbuster merger with Whole Foods in 123 days.
Bar Harbor Story Substack
June 15, 2026
Federal data, published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics the same day Trump spoke, told a different story. The National Urban League, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies had each, in recent weeks, reached the same conclusion: Black America is not experiencing record-low unemployment. It is experiencing the economic equivalent of a recession, driven not by natural market cycles but by deliberate policy choices.
Chicago Crusader
June 15, 2026
“There’s going to be two-earner income households where one earner drops out of the labor pool, because there’s going to be so much productivity,” Bezos said.
In that statement, he assumed that productivity gains are shared with workers, though that hasn’t been the case since the 1970s, as the Economic Policy Institute has been demonstrating for the past three decades. From the end of World War II through the ’70s, the rate of productivity gains and workers’ wage increases were virtually identical.
American Prospect
June 15, 2026
Ultimately, they proved no match for rapacious corporate greed. America’s infrastructure for peaceful economic democracy was intentionally dismantled. (The Economic Policy Institute enumerates the spread of union-busting even in recent years, noting that “workers at Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s have encountered multibillion-dollar corporations who are prepared to do whatever is necessary, lawful or unlawful, to crush their organizing campaigns.”)
The Nation
June 15, 2026
An analysis published by Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that the price increases caused by the Iran war have been so large that they’ve wiped out any prior gains in real wages during Trump’s second term.
Zipperer also warned that “as long as the war continues, there is a heightened threat that price increases will spill over to the broader economy, triggering a more permanent increase in the cost of living and further reductions in real earnings.”
Common Dreams
June 15, 2026
Lingo said 93% of workers represented by the union earn less than $39,000 a year. She contrasted that with an Economic Policy Institute estimate that a one-earner household with one child on the Lower Shore needs $67,000 to meet basic expenses.
Ocean City Today Dispatch (Maryland)
June 15, 2026
Based on a tool provided by the Economic Policy Institute, those families could afford even the most expensive tuition for a single child in all but two …[paywall].
The Tennessean
June 15, 2026
In any case, as Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute points out, the deeper problems are slow income growth, rising inequality, and extreme wealth …[paywall].
Project Syndicate
June 15, 2026
According to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, Starbucks baristas in Buffalo have been negotiating a contract for 1,645 days, and Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island have been at it for 1,532 days.
New Republic
June 15, 2026