While teacher salaries rose 3.3% in the 2023-24 school year, that increase fails to keep pace with inflation, leaving too many educators straining under the burden of a rising cost of living. In fact, from 2014-15 to 2023-24, inflation-adjusted teacher pay in Florida has dropped nearly 13 percent. The wage gap between teachers and other similarly educated professionals also persists, with Florida teachers earning just $0.78 for every dollar compared to their peers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Daytona Beach News-Journal
May 5, 2025
As the Economic Policy Institute recently explained, Social Security personnel “protect a trove of personally identifiable information.”
“Sensitive information stored in SSA databases includes not only Social Security numbers, but also detailed earnings, tax, banking, and medical records,” the group observed. “Until DOGE entered SSA headquarters, this information was carefully protected, with limited access granted to specially trained employees only for specific purposes.”
Common Dreams
May 5, 2025
But how does one define “merit” when Donald Trump started his company on a million-dollar loan from his father? What is “excellence” when the Economic Policy Institute finds that parental income is the leading predictor of a student’s academic success? What is “intelligence” if someone scores lower on the English portion of a standardized test but is smart enough to speak two or three languages?
Northern Express
May 5, 2025
Dave Kamper at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C., said that for cities of New Orleans’ size, spending approximately half of ARPA money on revenue replacement is fairly typical.
“One of the great successes of ARPA is that they just let the local authorities make the decisions that made the most sense to them,” Kamper told Verite News.
Kamper noted that money used for revenue replacement was probably most impactful in its ability to maintain or even build the public sector workforce.
Verite News
May 5, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute’s 2024 budget rankings show California is one of the most expensive states to live in. The institute’s Family Budget Calculator measures the income a four-person household needs to maintain a modest yet adequate standard of living, compared with the federal poverty line and the Supplemental Poverty Measure. All but four of California’s 58 counties were in the highest monthly cost brackets.
Orange County Register
May 5, 2025
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