“There’s going to be two-earner income households where one earner drops out of the labor pool, because there’s going to be so much productivity,” Bezos said.
In that statement, he assumed that productivity gains are shared with workers, though that hasn’t been the case since the 1970s, as the Economic Policy Institute has been demonstrating for the past three decades. From the end of World War II through the ’70s, the rate of productivity gains and workers’ wage increases were virtually identical.
American Prospect
June 15, 2026
Ultimately, they proved no match for rapacious corporate greed. America’s infrastructure for peaceful economic democracy was intentionally dismantled. (The Economic Policy Institute enumerates the spread of union-busting even in recent years, noting that “workers at Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s have encountered multibillion-dollar corporations who are prepared to do whatever is necessary, lawful or unlawful, to crush their organizing campaigns.”)
The Nation
June 15, 2026
An analysis published by Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, found that the price increases caused by the Iran war have been so large that they’ve wiped out any prior gains in real wages during Trump’s second term.
Zipperer also warned that “as long as the war continues, there is a heightened threat that price increases will spill over to the broader economy, triggering a more permanent increase in the cost of living and further reductions in real earnings.”
Common Dreams
June 15, 2026
Lingo said 93% of workers represented by the union earn less than $39,000 a year. She contrasted that with an Economic Policy Institute estimate that a one-earner household with one child on the Lower Shore needs $67,000 to meet basic expenses.
Ocean City Today Dispatch (Maryland)
June 15, 2026
Based on a tool provided by the Economic Policy Institute, those families could afford even the most expensive tuition for a single child in all but two …[paywall].
The Tennessean
June 15, 2026
In any case, as Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute points out, the deeper problems are slow income growth, rising inequality, and extreme wealth …[paywall].
Project Syndicate
June 15, 2026
According to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, Starbucks baristas in Buffalo have been negotiating a contract for 1,645 days, and Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island have been at it for 1,532 days.
New Republic
June 15, 2026
Nor has the action been solely in traditional labor strongholds, such as the Northeast and California. An analysis of Labor Department data from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, found that the South added 214,000 unionized workers last year, compared with 249,000 for the rest of the country.
“It’s not a blip, what’s going on—there is a sort of larger spark,” said EPI President Heidi Shierholz.
Wall Street Journal
June 15, 2026
Kevin Lynn, executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy and founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which has advocated for H-1B reforms, told Newsweek that he felt the analysis was not reliable.
“USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] data and the Economic Policy Institute analyses have long shown that many H-1B jobs are certified at lower wage levels within their occupations, fueling concerns about wage suppression,” Lynn said. “It also overlooks the highly publicized instances of Americans being asked to train their H-1B replacements, Disney, Southern California Edison, AGI, etc., before being laid off.
Newsweek
June 15, 2026
Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute said the recent rise in inflation has wiped out a year and a half of wage growth, leaving workers with the same wages as in January 2025 on average. And there could be more pain ahead as higher energy prices start rippling through the economy.
“So far, excessive inflation has been limited to energy and airfares,” Zipperer wrote. “But as long as the war continues, there is a heightened threat that price increases will spill over to the broader economy, triggering a more permanent increase in the cost of living and further reductions in real earnings.”
The Fiscal Times
June 15, 2026