The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit think tank headed by union leaders, estimates a family of one adult and one child in Milwaukee County needs at least $73,721 “to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
May 5, 2025
“State and local government is the place where you often have safety net measures in place; so if we do go into a recession, seeing how well they’re holding up in terms of employment is also useful,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN Business
May 5, 2025
“Lower-wage federal contractors include janitors who clean government buildings, food service workers on military bases, cashiers in gift shops in national parks and security guards protecting federal property,” Samantha Sanders, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of government affairs and advocacy, told Truthout. “This pay cut is a blatant attack on these workers — everyday people all across the country trying to make rent, buy groceries, and support their families.”
Truthout
May 5, 2025
“Forty-three percent of women and almost half of all children are poor and low income,” Barber told the crowd, citing an assessment of Economic Policy Institute data. “Somebody ought to say something … Somebody gotta challenge this budget.”
Richmond Free Press
May 5, 2025
Many states have raised their own wage floors, but 20 states still use the federal minimum. The annual income of a single adult working full time at the federal minimum leaves this individual below the official poverty line in 2025. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 14 million U.S. workers earn less than $15 per hour.
Counterpunch
May 5, 2025
Florida is not the first state to loosen child labor protections, or even the most aggressive in that effort. Last year eight states, all led by Republicans, did so, according to a tracking by the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute.
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“This is a coordinated effort being led by a constellation of business lobbying groups and industry associations that would especially benefit from changes in child labor laws,” Nina Mast, a child labor expert at the EPI, told an Illinois state senate committee last year.
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“This administration may be more open to looking at Department of Labor prohibitions on hazardous occupations for tens and to pull some of those back,” says Jennifer Sherer, an EPI analyst. “That’s what the weakening of state standards appears to be laying the groundwork for.”
LA Times
May 5, 2025
Between March and April 2020, 5.7 million workers ages 55 and up lost their jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of federal data.
CNBC
May 5, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, parents in Michigan can expect to pay just over $10,000 a year for infant care and $9,000 a year for preschool.
CBS Detroit
May 5, 2025
“Our economy runs on people buying stuff and getting services. If that slows down because people have either lost their job or they’re worried about losing their job, it can snowball into materially lower employment,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Moreover, some recessionary trends occur in smaller pockets before affecting the broader economy. “Even if we have a mild recession, certain groups of workers are much more likely to be hurt than others,” Gould said. Black workers, for example, consistently experience unemployment rates twice that of white workers, so any downturn will have a magnified impact. “There’s no such thing as a mild recession for marginalized groups,” Gould said.
CNET
May 5, 2025
“We have a highly globalized food supply chain — much of what we buy and eat at the grocery store is not grown or raised in the United States,” said Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “The president’s indiscriminate tariff policy is going to hit prices for imported foods as well as for foods produced domestically that compete with foreign foods. Shoppers should expect that some foods they are used to won’t be available on the shelf at any price.”
Salon
May 5, 2025