According to the Economic Policy Institute, since the 1970s the U.S. economy has suffered from wage stagnation and the slow growth of living standards for low- and moderate-income workers while the costs of living have drastically increased. On the flip side, those with the most income, wealth, and power have continued to actively suppress policies that would allow for shared prosperity.
Santa Monica Daily Press
March 26, 2024
Thirty states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws since 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Courier Journal
March 26, 2024
When deciding how much to tip, it can be helpful to look up the minimum and subminimum wages of your state, says Allegretto. The think tank Economic Policy Institute has a wage tracker that can help you find this information.
NPR
March 26, 2024
As of 2022, teachers earn 26.4% less than other college-educated workers, the lowest in six decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Stacker
March 26, 2024
These uses of state power to try to suppress Southern workers’ wages by blocking the path to a union contract are nothing new.
Southern Republicans have for decades claimed that “business-friendly” policies—including laws that constrain workers’ rights—would lead to an abundance of jobs and prosperity. The data show a grim reality.
Newsweek
March 26, 2024
On Tuesday, a virtual workshop will be held to offer basic information regarding unions for working class folks and others interested in learning about the topic especially in Alabama.
The workshop is sponsored by the North Alabama Labor Council and the presentation will be conducted by Jennifer Sherer of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Sherer is a senior state policy coordinator for EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) Worker Power Project.
Alabama Reporter
March 26, 2024
It’s up to each state representative to set their employees’ salaries with a $75,000 cap, according to McCann, Tate’s spokesperson. Representatives must pay their staff at least $35,000. That floor means representatives can pay their staff about $7,000 less than a living wage in the Lansing/East Lansing metro area, according to calculations from the Economic Policy Institute, a research organization focused on low- and middle-income workers.
Detroit Free Press
March 25, 2024
Education majors tend to be paid less as well. While teachers have good job security, summers off and pensions, they’re usually paid by state governments, which have lagged in keeping wages commensurate with inflation. In recent years, the “teacher pay penalty” has gotten worse, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
March 25, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute says the average annual income of the top 1% is $1,316,985, but most people would probably feel like they were on Easy Street with a whole lot less.
GO Banking Rates
March 25, 2024
Heidi Shierholz, President of the Economic Policy Institute, joins the podcast to discuss the ongoing skewing of the income distribution. There’s a lengthy list of reasons why more of the economic pie is going to those in the top of the distribution, from less unionization and lax enforcement of labor laws, but you would be surprised to hear what’s not on the list. You may also be surprised that the conversation ends on an upbeat note.
Inside Economics podcast
March 25, 2024
It’s been four years since the Covid-19 pandemic led to business shutdowns across the country and a subsequent record 3.28 million unemployment filings. Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, gives us her take on the state of the labor market.
Wall Street Journal Take On The Week Podcast
March 25, 2024
Not all companies have responded to union drives with such hostility. Ben & Jerry’s and Microsoft have “tried to start a positive labor-management relationship,” the Economic Policy Institute reported on March 7, in an article arguing that the legal battle to ditch the NLRB relies on “long-rejected constitutional arguments about the agency’s structure.” EPI notes that none of the workers at Starbucks, Amazon or Trader Joe’s have a collective bargaining agreement yet, because these companies “have stalled the bargaining process.”
Counterpunch
March 22, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted in its analysis of the BLS figures that the share of nonunion workers who would like to have a union at their workplace is far higher than the share who actually have union representation,” a testament to the effectiveness of corporate union-busting campaigns and the need for much stronger federal labor laws.
Common Dreams
March 22, 2024
In 1965, the average chief executive’s pay at the 350 largest U.S. companies was about 20 times the average wage of their rank-and-file workers, according to the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute. In 2022, it was 344.5 times as much.
LA Times
March 22, 2024
The lowest-paid workers in the U.S. economy have seen their wages surge in the past four years, outpacing gains for any other group of earners, according to a new report from Economic Policy Institute – but their wages remain “grossly inadequate.”
Real wages of the lowest-paid workers grew 12.1% between 2019 and 2023, researchers at the left-leaning think tank found, surging faster than the wages of any other group of earners. That number is adjusted for inflation.
The trend is “a notable reversal of fortune for lower-wage workers in the U.S. labor market,” researchers wrote in the report, released Thursday.
MarketWatch
March 22, 2024
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—accurately described by the progressive Economic Policy Institute as “essentially a climate-change bill”— …
The Wall Street Journal
March 22, 2024
Forty-three members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, and labor advocacy groups and unions including the Economic Policy Institute, the National Employment Law Project, and the AFL-CIO have endorsed the PTO Act.
Common Dreams
March 22, 2024
According to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Office of Management and Budget and Economic Policy Institute data, when corporate taxes made up 21.8% of all federal revenue in 1965, the average CEO-to-median worker pay ratio was 21 to 1. By 2022, corporate tax receipts had fallen to just 8.7% of federal revenue and the average pay ratio had risen to 344 to 1.
Common Dreams
March 22, 2024
In 2023, “foreign-born” workers comprised nearly 19% of the U.S. labor force, according to analysis by nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute of Current Population Survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is an uptick from 15.3% in 2006.
Forbes
March 22, 2024
paid 344 times as much as a typical worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. U.S. securities regulations now require that…[paywall].
Atlanta Journal Constitution
March 22, 2024
“Never in recent history has this dynamic been more clear,” researchers at the Economic Policy Institute noted in 2020 in a report on how unions benefit all workers during public health crises. Never has it been more important that all workers have a voice in the workplace and access to a union. Workers’ lives and the health and safety of working families depends on their ability to have a say in how they do their jobs.”
Next City
March 22, 2024
Minnesota’s minimum wage was just adjusted for inflation on Jan. 1 to $10.85 an hour for large employers and $8.85 an hour for other state minimum wages.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, women and people of color are benefitting the most from the change, but some lawmakers believe the pay bump still isn’t enough.
CBS Minnesota
March 22, 2024
While the number of workers represented by a union has increased (by 191,000 from 2022 to 2023), the share of workers represented by a union has decreased slightly, from 11.3% to 11.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
MLK50
March 22, 2024
An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute in 2015 revealed that income inequality caused the average middle-class worker to lose approximately $17,957 in yearly income in 2007.
GistFest
March 22, 2024
ABOUT 50% OF THE LABOR MARKET’S RECENT GROWTH CAME FROM FOREIGN-BORN WORKERS BETWEEN JANUARY 2023 AND JANUARY 2024, ACCORDING TO ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE ANALYSIS OF FEDERAL DATA.
C-SPAN Washington Journal
March 22, 2024
Minnesota teachers make nearly 28% less than other comparable college-educated workers in the state, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. That gap is about 26% nationally.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
March 22, 2024
Furthermore, studies conducted by the Economic Policy Institute have shown that voucher students performed worse than their peers going to schools in the traditional sense.
TheChattanoogan.com
March 22, 2024
For this article, rental prices were taken from Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:Z) and Zumper, grocery figures were taken from the Economic Policy Institute,
Insider Monkey
March 22, 2024
Advocates, including the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the Economic Policy Institute worried earlier versions of the bill would put kids at risk to hazardous working environments.The legislation was one of two bills lawmakers considered that would have weakened the state’s protections for young workers.
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Nina Mast, state economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank aimed at including the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions, agreed that the final version of the bill was much improved than the original version, but said not all concerns were addressed.
Mast said her main concern with the bill now is that it’s unclear and up to interpretation whether minors can work in hazardous work beyond what is outlined in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
“If it is not clear to advocates who have pored over multiple versions of the bill, how can we expect it to be clear to the lawmakers voting in support of it, to the employers expected to follow it, or to state agents charged with enforcing it?” Mast said.
West Virginia Watch
March 22, 2024