Media clips
-
August 3, 2026
-
“I worry a great deal that when you have a government and policymakers basically out to destroy huge portions of the public sector, wholesale implementation of AI will provide them a social veneer just to do that rather than using technology in more positive ways to improve the quality and breadth of public services,” said Ben Zipperer, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
There are higher stakes for federal agencies compared with private companies when it comes to AI implementation, Zipperer contended, because improper usage could lead to individuals losing their benefits or shaky legal justifications for government actions. Unlike in the private sector, however, the economist emphasized that there isn’t a market factor in government to push back on poor AI implementation.
“A private sector company could replace all their workers with AI, but then their product quality would probably suffer, and they’ll lose sales. But there’s no profitability check on the public sector,” he said. “So if the public sector uses AI as a way or an excuse to make public servants’ jobs worse or to cut public services, there’s not a non-political check on that, and public services just suffer.”
Government Executive July 28, 2026 -
Buying books in prison isn’t easy. Incarcerated people are paid very little, if at all, for their labor. Last year, the Economic Policy Institute reported that when incarcerated workers are paid, they earn between 13 and 52 cents an hour on average. Especially for prisoners who don’t have some form of financial support on the outside, buying a book often means foregoing deodorant, food, shoes, and other items from commissary.
The Progressive Magazine July 28, 2026 -
You surely know that CEOs get paid a lot more than average workers. You might not appreciate just how much more, though. Per the Economic Policy Institute, “In 2024, CEOs were paid 281 times as much as a typical worker – in contrast to 1965, when they were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.” The EPI also notes: “From 1978 (to) 2024, top CEO compensation shot up 1,094%, compared with a 26% increase in a typical worker’s compensation.”
The Motley Fool July 28, 2026 -
Meanwhile, the CEOs of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s make $20 million a year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO pay rose roughly 1000% from 1978 to 2024, while worker pay rose about 26%. In 1965, CEOs made 21 times what workers did—now they make 281 times more.
Paul Crenshaw Substack July 28, 2026 -
Summer break is when college students can finally exhale after a long school year. But if they just wrapped up their final year in school, they might still be holding their breath. Graduates in the class of 2026 are navigating an unusually weak labor market, where unemployment for young workers, age 22 to 27, has risen at nearly double the rate of the rise in overall unemployment. That’s according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute over the last three years. The National Association of Colleges and Employers found that less than half of the class of 2026 graduated with a job.
NPR Weekend Edition July 28, 2026 -
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that rebuilding union power would significantly reduce racial wage gaps while strengthening our economy and our democracy. Communities with higher union membership invest more in public education, are more likely to expand access to health care and provide stronger unemployment protections when people lose their jobs.
Black Press USA July 28, 2026 -
REPORTER: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted on Tuesday to rescind the requirement that private employers collect demographic data. Can you talk about that?
VALERIE WILSON: Yeah, this is really a reversal of 60 years of the EEOC’s history and mission in enforcing anti-discrimination law, specifically anti-discrimination in employment law in this country. The big news is about the EE01 form, which is required by private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees.
But they actually voted to rescind all of the data collection. So that would also include employment data from state and local government, as well as elementary and secondary public schools and local labor unions. So it’s not just the EE01, they voted to rescind all of the data collection efforts that, again, have been in place for 60 years in order to support their role in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, and a number of other protected classes.
WORT-FM (Labor Radio, Madison WI) July 28, 2026 -
An economic theory was sold to us that people adopted that dramatically increased the power of capital, decreased the power of labor, and shifted this income share. I should just note that, wearing my economist hat, there are lots of reasons income shares can change. One is productivity, for example, but in the case of this period, actually worker productivity kept going up. Just more and more of that productivity was captured by the shareholders and owners of capital and not captured in workers’ wages. The Economic Policy Institute has done some great work on this.
Current Affairs July 28, 2026 -
By the numbers: About 16.5 million U.S. workers were represented by unions in 2025, the highest number in 16 years, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.
- That amounts to just 11.2% of workers, but the rate varies drastically by industry and job.
- About 36% of education, training, and library employees are unionized. Just 4.4% of workers in computer occupations are represented by unions.
Axios July 28, 2026