One area that still has a shortage is bus drivers. A November report from the Economic Policy Institute found that despite having been alleviated slightly in the last year, the bus driver shortage remains severe.
NJ Spotlight
March 6, 2025
January 2025 report from the Economic Policy Institute points out that in the South “incarceration rates are the highest, prison wages are lowest, and forced labor arrangements bear the most striking resemblances to past forms of convict leasing and debt peonage.” The report shows that states in the American South “incarcerate people at the highest rates in the world.”
Counterpunch
March 6, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 150,000 federal government employees who stand to be affected by workforce reduction efforts live in Florida, including roughly 17,000 in the Orlando metro area alone.
Orlando Weekly
March 6, 2025
Some observers took a more critical view of the turn of events. “The Maximus story is a cautionary tale of what happens when taxpayer dollars are spent on a firm hell-bent on violating workers’ rights,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “Maximus has enjoyed a $6 billion contract with few, if any, strings attached to it — [the Biden] administration could have walked from this contract. Some things are just worth the fight,” she said.
Capital & Main
March 6, 2025
According to numbers provided by the Economic Policy Institute, Ohio has nearly 81,000 workers employed by the federal government, based on U.S. Census and other data.
Dayton Daily News
March 6, 2025
Paying for care for a baby in Oregon can cost more than supporting a college kid.
The average cost of infant care in the state in 2024 was about $19,064 a year, or $1,589 a month, according to a new tool released by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The Oregonian
March 6, 2025
The researchers are determined to continue their work in spite of the recent layoffs. Several state governments are looking to snap up former federal employees, including Hawaii, Washington State, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York.
Considering California is home to the most federal workers in the country — according to Economic Policy Institute, here’s hoping California is next in line, and this critical work protecting our coastline can continue.
SFist
March 6, 2025
Millions of workers across the country regularly experience similar violations, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in illegally withheld wages every year, according to an Economic Policy Institute report.
Fast Company
March 6, 2025
Other key reasons for tariffs include national security concerns, shoring up key points in supply chains and combating monopolization of critical imports — aspects that became particularly salient during the Covid-19 pandemic, Economic Policy Institute economists Adam Hersch and Josh Bivens have noted.
“Tariffs are a valid, and often useful, industrial policy tool that can provide narrow and targeted protection for key sectors,” they noted.
CNN Business
March 6, 2025
While inflation was a centerpiece of Trump’s campaign, so far “We’re not seeing anything that is credibly going to address the high prices of food, housing and health care that he pledged to do something about,” Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, told MarketWatch. “What he talked about doing is almost certain to cause prices to go up.”
MarketWatch
March 6, 2025