Data shows workers in right-to-work states make 3.2 percent less on average than their counterparts in similar positions in non-right-to-work states — $1,670 per year for a full-time worker — according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. On job growth, the Economic Policy Institute draws a different conclusion from the Harvard study cited by Cline, saying there are “no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.”
The Keene Sentinel
January 27, 2025
Companies are prohibited from paying H-1B workers less than other workers with similar skills and qualifications. Still, about 60 percent of the positions paid “well below” the local median wage for the occupation in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute, citing the Labor Department’s “broad discretion” to set H-1B wage levels.
New York Times
January 27, 2025
“Modern youth sub-minimum wages are a persistent relic of employers’ past and present interest in children as pool of exploitable, low-wage workers,” argued 2024 article from the Economic Policy Institute.
The Maine Wire
January 27, 2025
“I think it is actually terrible policy,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, and a labor economist in the Obama administration. “If you really want to help tip workers, do it directly through raising the federal minimum wage and phasing out the tipped minimum wage.”
She says she’s concerned this policy might slow the momentum to overhaul the tip worker minimum wage.
The federal minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13, though certain states have set a higher benchmark.
NPR
January 27, 2025
Then again, Trump’s first term was a series of constant attacks on workers’ rights — in 2020 the Economic Policy Institute outlined the first Trump administration’s 50 most egregious attacks on working people.
Clean Technica
January 27, 2025
For decades, there has been a maddening gap between what the US economy could be delivering for working families and what it actually does deliver. The richest country in the world chronically fails to offer broad-based economic prosperity and security, because policymaking has been captured by the wealthy and privileged. In pursuit of their own financial interests, the well-off have piled one boulder after another in the way of a typical household’s ability to carve out an economically secure life.
This has been a long-going, incremental process, so there is no magic-bullet solution that could immediately clear the path. Each presidential administration must be graded on how many boulders it removed (or added). Viewed in this light, the economic-policy priorities of former President Joe Biden’s administration deserve much more credit than they have received. Biden chalked up significant achievements on behalf of American families, and even those that were stymied by Congress were well worth pursuing.
Project Syndicate
January 27, 2025
Resources:
Economic Policy Institute: How Vouchers Harm Public Schools
KALW
January 27, 2025
An Economic Policy Institute report, published in 2022, found that migrants with H-2B visas are being “employed in industries in which there is extensive wage theft and lawbreaking by employers” — with the largest share, more than half of all penalties assessed between 2000 and 2021, coming from the food industry.
Politico Magazine
January 27, 2025
Data shows workers in right-to-work states make 3.2% less on average than their counterparts in similar positions in non-right-to-work states – $1,670 per year for a full-time worker – according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. On job growth, the Economic Policy Institute draws a different conclusion from the Harvard study cited by Cline, saying there are “no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.”
New Hampshire Bulletin
January 27, 2025
Our friends at the Economic Policy Institute also issued a new report on another widespread practice that’s hurting the labor market: Workers who are misclassified as independent contractors. Studies show that as many as 30% of employers misclassify their workers as contractors, even though they meet all the legal requirements to be considered employees.
The Pitch from Civic Ventures
January 27, 2025