Roughly 15% of salaried workers are now entitled to overtime pay, the AP reports citing data from the Economic Policy Institute. If the new rule passes, nearly 30% of salaried workers would become eligible for overtime, though that’s far lower than the 60% of salaried workers who were entitled to overtime pay in the 1970s, per the EPI. Since then, the threshold has not kept pace with wage growth, experts say.
CNBC
September 1, 2023
Guests Today: Quincy Krosby of LPL Financial, Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute, Michael Lewis of Truist Securities, Steven Meier, New York City Retirement System CIO, Art Hogan of B. Riley Wealth, Kevin Kelly, Kelly ETFS CEO, Nancy Tengler of Laffer Tengler Investments, Alan Binder of Princeton University, Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research and Nick Bunker of Indeed.
Bloomberg TV
September 1, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute claims employers routinely underpay farm workers, but federal investigations into this problem have dropped to an all-time low thanks to funding and staffing constraints.
Since 2000, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, with only 810 investigators to protect 165 million workers, has seen investigations drop by more than 60%.
Agribusiness
September 1, 2023
Economic Policy Institute president Heidi Shierholz—a former DOL chief economist—similarly praised the proposal, saying that “EPI is encouraged to see this important regulation move forward. The overtime threshold has not been properly updated for nearly 50 years, robbing millions of workers of their basic wage and hour rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act.”
Common Dreams
September 1, 2023
As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, the FLSA mandates that the DOL set the salary level below which workers qualify for overtime pay –– a hugely important metric, because a too-low threshold that does not account for inflation contributes to wage stagnation for workers
On Labor
September 1, 2023
“This proposal would ensure that employers have ‘skin in the game’ when they ask these workers to work long hours,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
The Connecticut Mirror
September 1, 2023
Under the proposed rules, 27% of full-time salaried workers would get overtime, the Department of Labor estimated.3 As of 2019, 15% were eligible, down from 60% in 1975, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Investopedia
September 1, 2023
That brings us to the other side of the coin on workplace crime, wage theft. That’s been estimated as high as $50 billion a year by the Economic Policy Institute, which extrapolated from a 2008 survey of low-wage front-line workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
LA Times
September 1, 2023
Wage growth has been particularly strong for low-paid workers since March 2020, when the pandemic shut down the U.S. economy, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Because of government stimulus such as expanded unemployment benefits, low-paid workers had a stronger safety net as they looked for better-paying jobs. As a result, many employers have boosted pay during the past three years.
Despite those gains, millions of workers are still struggling to pay the bills, with almost 4 in 10 Americans recently telling the U.S. Census that they were having difficulties meeting their household expenses. Although though pay increase are staying ahead of inflation this year, low- and middle-wage workers have generally not kept up with the cost of living over the prior four decades, according to EPI research.
“Low and middle-wage workers continue to struggle to make ends meet, even thought there have been some gains that we’d love to see continue for lower wage workers,” Gould told CBS MoneyWatch. “Many people have seen very little increase in the last five decades.”
CBS Moneywatch
September 1, 2023
Yet as corporate profits and CEO pay have skyrocketed in recent years, worker benefits have remained flat, or in some cases declined. From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay increased 1,460% while average worker pay rose by just 18%, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Yakima Herald
September 1, 2023
While the drop in job openings was significant, the reduction is due to little turnover, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at The Economic Policy Institute. The elevated amount of job openings observed in the past few years was not necessarily signaling an overheated job market, but rather a higher rate of “churn” as people quit and found new jobs at a faster rate, she said.
However, as that churn declines, so will the number of job openings.
“It’s not because things are necessarily contracting, it’s just normalizing somewhat,” she said of the labor market.
CNBC
September 1, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has estimated that about 15% of full-time salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay under the Trump-era policy. The new rule would almost double that to nearly 30%, according to Labor Department figures.
That’s still fewer than the more than 60% of salaried workers who were entitled to overtime pay in the 1970s, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The overtime rule has only been sporadically updated over the past decades, with the Trump increase being the first since 2004. The Labor Department’s new rule attempts to change that pattern by adopting automatic increases to the salary threshold every three years.
“This is long overdue. It’s decades overdue, and it’s really important step,” said Economic Policy Institute Heidi Shierholz, who was the chief economist at the Labor Department when the Obama administration tried to enact its overtime rule.
Associated Press
September 1, 2023
However, Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, suggested that Tuesday’s numbers are still consistent with a good labor market for workers.
“Even as hires have softened, hiring remains above the quits rate in every sector,” Gould said in a statement. “The great reshuffling isn’t what it was two years ago, but it continues as workers look and find better job opportunities.”
The Hill
September 1, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reported last year that CEOs at the nation’s top 350 public firms made 399 times what the typical worker got in compensation, up from 366-to-1 the year before. The ratio was 59-1 in 1989, and just 20-1 in 1965.
Buffalo News
September 1, 2023
A number of studies have documented gig workers’ subminimum wages.
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Nearly a third of gig workers (29%) reported earning less than the minimum wage in their state, according to a June 2022 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
NerdWallet
September 1, 2023
New research from the Economic Policy Institute states that 30% of Indiana’s workforce work at jobs that pay less than the state’s living wage benchmark of $18/hour.
WRTV
September 1, 2023
“When thinking about the minimum wage, earnings, income and wealth, we still have a long way to go,” said Adewale Maye, policy and research analyst with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
EPI is a non-partisan, non-profit. Maye’s report called “Chasing the Dream of Equity” used a quantitative lens to examine how much progress has been made and where disparities remain. Maye spent one year gathering and reviewing federal data.
“Some of the things that we found was that a lot of these indicators have grown more disparate over time. The inequities have broadened,” Maye said.
ABC 7 News DC
September 1, 2023
- Kyle Moore, economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), talks about a new report from EPI that examines the economic impact of Civil Rights-era legislation and where gaps remain.
The Brian Lehrer Show
September 1, 2023
A new report shows 60 years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, economic disparities continue to plague Black America due to a lack of legislation in the post-civil rights era.
The Economic Policy Institute, in its report, notes that gaps in home ownership, wealth and wages continue to keep one of the march’s goals — economic justice — out of reach for many Black people.
The barriers to economic equity include “occupational segregation, discrimination, hiring and pay inequity, equitable pathways to promotion, a stagnant minimum wage and falling union coverage,” Adewale A. Maye, policy analyst in the institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, told theGrio.
Thegrio.com
September 1, 2023
Adewale Maye talked about his research that found post-civil rights era legislation has largely failed to address widening racial disparities in wages, wealth, and homeownership for Black Americans.
C-SPAN Washington Journal
September 1, 2023
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, a national $15 minimum wage by 2025 would raise the incomes of tens of millions of workers, including servers in restaurants, grocery store employees, and essential health care workers as well as two million direct care workers who provide long-term services and supports.
The Hill
September 1, 2023
Chasing the Dream of equity: How policy has shaped economic racial disparities, delves into how public policy and economic conditions have failed to heed the 1963 call for justice. Published by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the report reveals a disturbing economic landscape despite the enactment of a series of laws intended to bring economic parity for all.
EurWeb
September 1, 2023
Part of the problem is teachers’ low pay compared with that of other workers with similar education levels, according to a 2022 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that advocates for lower- and middle-income workers. Median pay for high-school teachers was $61,820 a year in 2021, according to the most recent Labor Department data, with 10% of them earning less than $46,090.
Wall Street Journal
September 1, 2023
“If you look at women’s labour force participation, it’s really bounced and it’s back on track as if Covid hadn’t happened,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor who is now director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “But it is still way below peer countries who have better childcare policies, better leave policies, better support for part-time work — all these things that provide support in the world we live in where women still shoulder disproportionate responsibility for caregiving . . . there’s still a long way to go,” she added.
Financial Times
September 1, 2023
US Labor Department wage investigations on farms have dropped by more than 60% over the past 22 years, and have largely focused on violations of the H-2A visa program for seasonal migrant farmworkers, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute study found.
“Federal labor standards enforcement efforts to protect farmworkers have in fact slid backward, with the number of investigations falling even further behind the already record-low levels during the years of the Trump administration,” Daniel Costa and Philip Martin wrote for EPI.
Bloomberg Law
September 1, 2023
We have made great strides towards fulfilling the core of the promissory note regarding job, educational and entrepreneurial opportunities. This is evident as data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the overall poverty rate for African Americans decreased by more than 12% between 1968 and 2016. The gap in educational attainment between Blacks and Whites has also declined. In a recent interview with The Hill, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, chief of Race, Wealth and Community for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, explained that whites now have 1.7 times “the four-year college attainment level of Blacks,” down from 2.4 in 1962. Yet, disparities still exist for Blacks in homeownership and wealth equity, areas that civil rights organizations will continue to address.
Winchester Star
September 1, 2023
“When thinking about the minimum wage, earnings, income and wealth, we still have a long way to go,” said Adewale Maye, policy and research analyst with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
EPI is a non-partisan, non-profit. Maye’s report called “Chasing the Dream of Equity” used a quantitative lens to examine how much progress has been made and where disparities remain. Maye spent one year gathering and reviewing federal data.
“Some of the things that we found was that a lot of these indicators have grown more disparate over time. The inequities have broadened,” Maye said.
ABC 7 News DC
August 29, 2023