“There were some concerns about the Black unemployment rate going up,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, referring to November’s uptick. “It’s still significantly higher than for other groups — and that’s still a concern — but nothing in this report jumps out as particularly problematic.”
CNBC
January 13, 2025
With 21 states and 48 cities and counties implementing minimum wage increases at the start of 2025—according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute—payroll budgets may already be pinched, limiting funds available for merit-based raises.
HR Executive
January 13, 2025
Cities and counties have been slowly raising their minimum wages as well — sometimes considerably higher than their state’s. The Economic Policy Institute has been documenting some of the more local wage floors.
Here are the localities with the highest minimum wages according to EPI — they’re all in Washington (where the minimum wage is $16.66) and California (where the minimum wage is $16.50). All minimums are close to or over $20 per hour. Some localities have different wage tiers depending on the size of the company.
CNBC
January 13, 2025
The raise in Ohio will affect more than 300,000 people, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for workers. The institute’s research shows that almost 90 percent of people benefitting from all state increases this year are adults, 58 percent are women and 20 percent are in families living below the federal poverty line.
Signal Cleveland
January 13, 2025
San Jose Mercury News
January 13, 2025
Iowa isn’t the only state that has rolled back child labor regulations, but it has made the most extreme changes, according to Jennifer Sherer at the Economic Policy Institute. Other states, meanwhile, are responding to the reports of children being exploited, killed, and injured working in dangerous jobs like meatpacking.
“We have states all over the country that are beginning to take action and respond to the child labor crisis that they’re seeing in their states and their industries,” she said. “States as diverse in geography and politics as Alabama, Colorado and Virginia all increased their penalty amounts for child labor violations just this past year in their legislatures.”
Iowa Starting Line
January 13, 2025
Between 1979 and 2024, productivity in the U.S. rose 80.9%, while hourly pay grew by only 29.4%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
MoneyWise
January 13, 2025
But critics say it disadvantages Americans because firms are able to recruit workers from overseas – and pay them less. In a 2020 report, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argued that the program enabled employers to undercut local wage levels.
Companies “have an incentive to use this program, because they can control the wages, and have a lot of control over the worker”, Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the EPI, told the Guardian. The labor standards around H-1B were too “lax”, he argued, and the broader rules “inadequate”.
The Guardian
January 13, 2025
But Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative for the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, said time and hour standards are important guardrails for children entering the workforce who may not be aware their rights or in a position to speak up if the hours and times their manager sets are “out of bounds.”
“I guess the question is are we trying to decrease and deter additional violations or are we interested in sending a signal that we’re not actually concerned about people following the law?” Sherer said.
Des Moines Register
January 13, 2025