However, you’ll be happy to hear that South Dakota has significantly more affordable childcare, with the Economic Policy Institute finding that childcare costs were $8,680 in the state, as of February 2025.
MoneyDigest
June 20, 2025
But productivity growth later resumed, reflected in a chart by Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute that has been reproduced so …[paywall].
Project Syndicate
June 20, 2025
A recent Economic Policy Institute brief detailed that “tariffs are a regressive tax, meaning people with lower incomes will pay a larger share of their earnings in taxes than high-income people. Tariffs are essentially a consumption tax, and consumption as a share of income tends to fall as incomes rise.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
June 20, 2025
Thirty states have adopted their own minimum wages above the 2009 federal rate, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). These include Hawley’s home state of Missouri, which increased its baseline to $13.75 and plans to raise it to $15.00 starting January 1, 2026.
Ben Zipperer, senior economist with the EPI, a progressive think tank that supports raising the minimum wage, told Newsweek that a Republican’s sponsorship of the bill “is admission that minimum wages are a very popular policy to correct the widespread problem of low pay.” However he expressed skepticism that the party would “abandon their consistent role as the chief obstacle to federal minimum wage increases.”
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Zipperer said that the hike proposed by Hawley and Welch, or the Democratic bill introduced earlier this year which would raise this incrementally to $17 an hour by 2030, would “unambiguously benefit low wage workers and their families and communities.” He cited a 2024 EPI study which found that most research into the topic has found either no resulting job losses or “only small disemployment effects.”
Newsweek
June 20, 2025
Jennifer Sherer (right), director of the State Worker Power Initiative with the Economic Policy Institute, speaks during the Johnson County manufactured home park press conference June 18.
Corridor Business Journal
June 20, 2025
But for now, the spillover effects from federal layoffs are “enormous” according to Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Because federal families can pay a lower than usual rate for child care at these facilities, when they lose their jobs, not only do they have to scramble for work, but also quality, affordable care for their kids.
“Many of these federal workers and federal contractors live paycheck to paycheck,” Gould said. “We don’t know what those federal workers are going to do with their kids. Obviously, they’re going to be looking for other jobs. If they get another job, they’re going to still need to have care for their kids or even when they’re doing job searches, they’re going to need to have care for their kids.”
Marketplace
June 20, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a DC-based think tank, in the first three months since Trump assumed office, his administration has shut down nearly a dozen OSHA offices in states with some of the highest workplace fatality rates like Louisiana and Alabama; attempted to close 34 Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) offices in the epicenter of the black lung epidemic; and tried to shutter the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which conducts critical research into workplace injuries and illnesses, laying off hundreds of workers in the process.
Teen Vogue
June 20, 2025
Senior Economist for the Economic Policy Institute, Adam Hersh, discusses the immediate and potential impact of the Trump tariffs, the ongoing challenges of trade fraud, and how the loss of government resources will impact all areas of society.
AML Rightsource Podcast
June 16, 2025
States are also backsliding. Many are lowering the ages that children can work in unsafe jobs and increasing the hours they can work. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 31 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor protections in recent years.
Counterpunch
June 16, 2025
While studies like those done by the Economic Policy Institute show that wage growth is exceeding inflation, many Americans don’t feel that way.
Benzinga (via Yahoo! Finance)
June 16, 2025