Kelles said income inequality is the primary driver of the housing crisis, citing the Economic Policy Institute’s 2024 report that says top earners saw massive income gains since the 1970s — up to 182% for the top 1% — while wages for the bottom 90% grew 44%. This growing wealth gap leaves average workers unable to afford construction-driven housing costs.
Ithaca Times
August 20, 2026
Today, Petersen—a vocal critic of the current tariff policy and advocate for interventions against tariff evasion—warned the magnitude of tariff dodging is “massive,” and the Trump administration would agree. The report cited a 2020 study by the Economic Policy Institute, which estimated 3.7 million jobs were displaced between 2001 and 2018 as a result of the U.S.-China trade deficit. Author Robert Scott said the deficit increased by $336.5 billion in that period, and this could eventually cost the U.S. between $60 billion and $606 billion in annual GDP losses, the White House claimed.
Fortune
August 17, 2026
A new tool from the Economic Policy Institute calculates the cost of mass deportation.
The tool, originally reported by Axios, uses data from a July spending report that shows Congress or other federal agencies have put more than $268 billion in federal funds toward powering the Trump administration’s deportation agenda until 2029.
Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, analyzed the data to show how that breaks down in each city, county and state — and what it could fund instead.
KJZZ
August 17, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute, using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics and Current Population Survey, found that Black unemployment averaged 7.2% nationally during the second quarter of 2026 compared with 3.3% for white workers. Unemployment among Black workers continued to exceed twice the rate recorded for white workers.
However, Washington, D.C. provides an even more striking example.
In EPI’s second-quarter 2026 State Unemployment by Race and Ethnicity analysis, D.C. had the highest overall unemployment rate in the country at 6.1%. The unemployment rate among Black workers in the District was 9.5%, compared with 3.7% among white workers.
Forbes
August 17, 2026
Mass deportations taking place under the second Trump administration could end up costing the average New Jersey taxpayer nearly $3,000, a new study says.
Nonprofit think-tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently released an online calculator that shows how many federal tax dollars are being spent on mass deportations in every U.S. state, county and city. It also shows what that money could be spent on instead, such as teachers, housing and health care.
See the calculator here, and learn about its methodology here.
Patch.com
August 17, 2026
Those changes were made, even though, a growing number of middle-class Americans are not earning enough to meet their basic needs. It’s something UC Berkeley researchers warned about a decade ago. Since 1979, wages for the nation’s highest earners have nearly doubled, while pay for the bottom 90% has risen just 44%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Napa Valley Register
August 17, 2026
For Black voters, their unhappiness about the state of the U.S. economy reflects the fact that they are now in the worst financial position they have been in a decade, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Newsweek
August 17, 2026
There is nothing in the state legislation that forces Uber or Lyft to come to a contract agreement with any union. Such is not the nature of labor negotiations.
AB 1340, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley), requires the parties to bargain in good faith — but if the companies refuse to do so, the remedy for that is an unfair labor practice charge, which takes time to resolve. As the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute demonstrated in a lengthy examination of corporate tactics, Starbucks, Amazon and Trader Joe’s (among others) have taken full advantage of that labor-complaint time gap to repeatedly stall negotiations.
Capital & Main
August 17, 2026
The truth is that “tax subsidies for retirement savings are upside down,” as the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute puts it. Some 80% of those subsidies go to households earning more than $100,000.
There’s little evidence that higher-income households are encouraged by those tax breaks to save more for retirement than they would without them — “they simply steer savings to tax-favored accounts,” EPI says.
LA Times
August 17, 2026