While it remains popular, the program has not been without controversy. In 2019, a dozen former au pairs from multiple countries sued the companies that recruited them, alleging they had been overworked and that companies had kept hold of a share of the wages meant for them. A $65.5 million settlement was later reached.
At the time, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said that the federal government, including Congress, needed to act to make substantial changes to the program to protect workers and increase oversight.
Newsweek
June 9, 2025
Half a dozen Nobel Prize-winning economists on Monday expressed their “grave concerns” about the sprawling budget reconciliation package passed last month by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, warning that slashing an already frayed social safety net and exploding the record deficit in service of massive tax cuts for the wealthiest households will worsen the nation’s economic woes.
“The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits,” Daron Acemoglu, Peter Diamond, Oliver Hart, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz wrote in an open letter published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C.
Common Dreams
June 9, 2025
Research from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., shows that voucher programs in Ohio result in majority Black school systems such as the Cleveland Metropolitan School District losing millions in education funding.
This impact of voucher programs disproportionately affects schools in predominantly Black communities across the U.S. with lower tax bases to fund public schools.
The Conversation
June 9, 2025
Six Nobel laureate economists said a massive budget bill passed by House lawmakers last month and backed by President Trump would weaken key safety-net programs while greatly lifting the federal debt.
The tax and spending package, which Republicans have dubbed the “one big beautiful bill,” would hurt millions of Americans by slashing Medicaid and food stamps, the economists wrote in a June 2 letter on behalf of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“Even with the safety net cuts, the House bill leads to public debt rising by over $3 trillion in coming years (and over $5 trillion over the next decade if provisions are made permanent rather than phasing out),” the economists state. “The higher debt and deficits will put noticeable upward pressure on both inflation and interest rates in coming years.”
CBS Moneywatch
June 9, 2025
Tipping is a complex issue. Nina Mast, an economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, sees tips as a modern tool of racist oppression in the South. “Tipped workers are more likely to be people of color, women, women of color or single parents, and are disproportionately born outside of the U.S.,” she wrote in a paper published last year.
Tipped workers experience high rates of poverty and are vulnerable to wage theft and sexual harassment, she added. “The South has the largest tipped workforce of any region. Tipped workers in the South are paid the second-lowest median wage of any region, and most Southern states allow employers to pay tipped workers as little as $2.13 an hour,” she wrote.
MarketWatch
June 9, 2025
Over the years, raids at farms, meatpacking plants and construction sites have grabbed headlines, but employers have seldom faced severe consequences. Many subcontract to avoid liability, and managers have long asserted that it is difficult to identify fake documents.
“They have plausible deniability for just about any hires,” said Daniel Costa, an immigration labor expert at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “The system was kind of rigged against workers and in favor of employers from the beginning.”
New York Times
June 9, 2025
When wages aren’t paid, they aren’t spent, and they aren’t taxed. That shrinks the economy, reducing buying power for consumers and municipalities alike. According to the Economic Policy Institute, research shows that minimum wage violations increase poverty among workers experiencing wage theft by 40.6% in New York.
My Twin Tiers
June 5, 2025
Adam Hersh of The Economic Policy Institute and John Whiten of The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy are our guests.
The Rick Smith Show
June 5, 2025
Data largely supports her perspective. The National Association of Realtors found the median existing-home price in the U.S. reached $414,800 in April 2025—up from just over $170,000 in 2012. Meanwhile, real wages for most American workers have remained largely stagnant since the 1970s, as shown in a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
Newsweek
June 5, 2025