Agencies covered by the order — supposedly all focused on national security — include the departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Interior, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, as well as Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and more. Layoffs have already begun in what Elise Gould, at the Economic Policy Institute, notes is “the steepest uptick since the laying off census takers in 2020.”
She continues, “The decision of this administration to target the federal workforce is having its intended effect. Unfortunately, this is likely only the tip of the iceberg.”
In These Times
June 2, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over 13 million Black Medicaid recipients and more than 19 million Latine Medicaid recipients are at risk of losing benefits under the bill.
As the authors of the EPI report explain, “Cuts to Medicaid will make low-income workers, non-workers, and their families poorer and less able to afford healthcare, especially those who are Black or Hispanic….Children are more than twice as likely as their white peers to rely on public health insurance.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
June 2, 2025
Similar laws to exempt tips and overtime have been introduced this year in 18 other states, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-aligned national think tank which called the proposed state laws “a gimmick” which would drain public funds and increase pressure from employers to work overtime.
“Though pitched as support for regular working people, the primary beneficiaries of these proposals would be employers and high earners who game the system,” the group said in a March 13 blog post.
The Press-Republican (New York)
June 2, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank largely funded by unions, says the impact would be less than 1% of unemployment compensation expenditures, and offering jobless benefits would stabilize a local economy hit by a strike. The legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis offered no assessment.
The Connecticut Mirror
June 2, 2025
Quotes Elise Gould (paywalled).
Fast Company
June 2, 2025
This trend of converting full time jobs into gig work, and depressing pay, is expected to grow, claiming more jobs in industries like health care, said Jen Sherer, the acting deputy director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network.
For example, to squeeze more profit and cut costs, some health systems are considering hiring nurses for just the days they are needed.
South Side Weekly
June 2, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute has compiled data on childcare costs by state. Washington, D.C. has the most expensive infant care at $20,667 per year. Mississippi has the most affordable infant care, at $6,868 per year.
Investopedia
June 2, 2025
“If I had to wave my magic wand to provide the best educational opportunity to every child in this country, I would take all of the money that is getting kind of put into these voucher programs and redirect all of it into public education. And in particular, I would redirect it into low-income neighborhoods who are getting less funds from their local property taxes in the first place,” Wething said.
Straight Arrow News
June 2, 2025
This reluctance to leave an abusive worksite can be compounded by the fact that many H-2A workers arrive with debt they have accrued from paying recruiters to get here. Employers are required to pay all recruitment costs, but recruiters’ practices go largely unregulated since they operate internationally.
The DC-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal thinktank, has said this amounts to a program that exploits and silences migrant workers, replacing year-round workers in the process. In some cases, US prosecutors have accused farmers and recruiters of using the H-2A program to engage in forced labor trafficking.
The Guardian
June 2, 2025
“It’s really a shame that Congress is trying to further cement this system by preferencing tips in the tax code,” said David Cooper, director of state policy and research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
…
Occupations like hotel cleaning staff are in a “gray area,” said Cooper, with the Economic Policy Institute: “Are they going to start being treated as customarily tipped employees as it relates to this tax preference?”
Such workers might like getting a tax break, he said. “But that might also create more opportunity for employers to start lowering their base pay, maybe even subjecting some of them to the lower tipped minimum wage.”
The Washington Post
June 2, 2025