The minimum wage increases will benefit three million employees across the country, and indirectly raise the pay of 6.2 million better-paid workers, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute. Wage increases help low-paid employees keep pace with inflation, which has run rampant since 2021, only cooling to 2.6 percent recently. There is no state minimum wage law in five Southern states: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Tennessee.
Daily Mail
January 8, 2025
According to the nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI), more than 9.2 million workers saw a raise in their minimum wage paychecks starting on Jan. 1. They will receive a total of $5.7 billion more pay in 2025.
Investopedia
January 8, 2025
Still, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute noted that the supply-demand imbalance for workers in the tech industry has been overstated. Other EPI research shows tech companies continue to hire H-1B workers in large numbers while shrinking their US workforces. They conclude that some tech companies are turning to cheaper foreign workers rather than hiring US workers. Other employers have brought over foreign tech workers and leased them out to other US companies, which lay off their IT departments made up of local, more expensive workers, according to EPI.
Yahoo Finance
January 8, 2025
But not everybody is convinced. Shortly before Sanders entered the fray, I spoke with Ronil Hira, a political scientist at Howard University who has been studying the H-1B program for more than two decades and writing about it at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, and elsewhere. Hira has frequently testified before Congress about what he sees as the program’s tendency to depress wages, promote outsourcing, and pad the profits of tech companies. The political fractures exposed by the MAGA blowup weren’t surprising to him. “This isn’t really a left-right issue,” he told me. “It’s a worker-corporations issue.”
The New Yorker
January 8, 2025
Features interview with Ron Hira.
Lever Times Podcast
January 8, 2025
More than nine million U.S. workers across 21 states got a pay bump on Wednesday as the new year ushered in new increases to minimum wage.
The increases ranged from 18 cents to $1.75 per hour. Pay went up by $5.7 billion in total from 2024 to 2025, according to the economic research think tank the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The EPI found that the majority of workers getting a raise, almost three in five, are women and about half are full-time workers.
Entrepreneur
January 7, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that studies the effect of minimum wage, issued a report which estimated that 9.2 million workers will see their wages increase by a total of $5.7 billion.
The federal minimum wage of $7.25 has not increased in 15 years.
New York Post
January 7, 2025
This year, minimum-wage workers in 21 states will see bigger paychecks. Wages will impact around 9.2 million workers and raise pay by a total of $5.7 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
NPR Up First Newsletter
January 7, 2025
The H-1B program requires employers to pay “prevailing wages” for their job postings. But 60% of the positions certified by the government are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation, according to a 2020 paper from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Wall Street Journal
January 7, 2025
The minimum wage is rising in 21 states on Jan. 1, with an estimated 9.2 million workers getting a mandated raise, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
New York Times
January 7, 2025