Cites EPI state DOGE blog [paywall].
Baltimore Sun
June 2, 2025
I rarely ask you to look at charts. Today is an exception. This one is from the Economic Policy Institute. It compares the typical American’s pay starting just after World War II (light blue line) with the nation’s increasing productivity since then (dark blue).
The chart shows the widening divergence between the rise of pay and the yields from productivity.
Robert Reich Substack
June 2, 2025
Around half of all families in the U.S. don’t have any retirement savings, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
MoneyWise
June 2, 2025
Work requirements. One proposal that may spark some of those enrollment losses is the introduction of work requirements for people ages 19 to 64, who would have to show proof of working 80 hours a month at a job or other qualifying activities. That could hurt workers, including those 50 to 64, says Monique Morrissey, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute.
“If the economy tips into recession, older workers are less likely to lose their jobs, but they have a harder time finding new ones,” she says. Without a job, those workers could lose coverage.
AARP
June 2, 2025
Josh Bivens, chief economist at Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told Newsweek on Sunday that concerned Republicans “have half a point” about the deficit spending.
“Right now, we’re running too-large deficits for an economy near full employment,” Bivens said. “The excess size of these deficits is about 2 to 2.5 percent of GDP—that’s how much we should raise in revenue or cut in spending to keep the ratio of debt to overall GDP stable going forward….”
The economist said, however, that the situation is more like a “leaky roof,” and not a “house fire” that requires a drastic response. “You want to address it, but don’t want to wildly overreact to it,” he said.
Newsweek
June 2, 2025
Najmabadi quotes David Cooper, of the leftist Economic Policy Institute, who complains that Congress is making tips more attractive, perpetuating the tipping business structure. But tipping is not going away, so it does make sense that Trump and Congress are working in the realm of reality — instead of Cooper’s weird wannabe world without tips, where everyone earns high hourly rates.
The Economic Policy Institute predicts that removing taxes from tips will make employers less likely to raise wages. It has concocted some weak reasons for why it believes taxing tips is better for workers. It predicts that no tax on tips will not help many people because they are already low-wage earners who do not pay taxes. It also predicts that more employers will want workers to become tipped employees so they can be paid the lower hourly rate. And it predicts that the plan could “encourage tax avoidance and deplete state budgets.”
The Federalist
June 2, 2025
Payscale reports that the cost of living in Chicago is 14% higher than the national average, driven primarily by housing costs.11 The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator (which takes into account housing, food, transportation, healthcare, taxes and other necessities) estimates that a household with two adults and no children living in Cook County would spend $5,599 a month on average or $67,185 a year.
Investopedia
June 2, 2025
Agencies covered by the order — supposedly all focused on national security — include the departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, as well as Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and more. Layoffs have already begun in what Elise Gould, at the Economic Policy Institute, notes is “the steepest uptick since the laying off census takers in 2020.”
She continues, “The decision of this administration to target the federal workforce is having its intended effect. Unfortunately, this is likely only the tip of the iceberg.”
In These Times
June 2, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over 13 million Black Medicaid recipients and more than 19 million Latine Medicaid recipients are at risk of losing benefits under the bill.
As the authors of the EPI report explain, “Cuts to Medicaid will make low-income workers, non-workers, and their families poorer and less able to afford healthcare, especially those who are Black or Hispanic….Children are more than twice as likely as their white peers to rely on public health insurance.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
June 2, 2025
Similar laws to exempt tips and overtime have been introduced this year in 18 other states, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-aligned national think tank which called the proposed state laws “a gimmick” which would drain public funds and increase pressure from employers to work overtime.
“Though pitched as support for regular working people, the primary beneficiaries of these proposals would be employers and high earners who game the system,” the group said in a March 13 blog post.
The Press-Republican (New York)
June 2, 2025