“There is no single policy that will close the wage gap,” said Emma Cohn and Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute’s Working Economics Blog. Possible solutions would include “pay transparency” laws that require employers to “include wage information in job postings.” Expanded medical and family leave requirements, universal childcare and an improved minimum wage would also help. Such efforts could “build an equitable economy that works for all.”
The Week
July 13, 2026
According to an analysis by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a worker earning the $7.25 federal minimum wage in 2022 made 27.4 percent less in inflation‑adjusted terms than a counterpart in July 2009. Compared with 1968—the historical peak of the minimum wage’s value—the 2022 federal rate had lost 40.2 percent of its purchasing power.
Newsweek
July 13, 2026
American unions have been making this case since the 1980s, and the economists at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) went up against virtually the entire economics profession when they made this case in the early 1990s.
And their case wasn’t protectionist as such. Decades ago, a number of EPI staffers and associates laid out discrete wage standards (as a percentage of nations’ various outputs and living costs) that nations would have to meet to be America’s trading partners.
American Prospect
July 13, 2026
It won’t help all children equally, though, says Ismael Cid-Martinez, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s a good idea for families that are already positioned to save,” he said. “But I’m deeply concerned about families who can’t afford to save, which represents the bulk of U.S. adults.”
Those families won’t be able to contribute to their children’s investment accounts, he said, and even if their babies are eligible for the Trump account seed funding, that won’t provide enough of a cushion to make a meaningful difference. The result, he fears, will widen economic disparities.
“If the government really wanted to do something to help families in need,” Mr. Cid-Martinez said, “it could bring back some of the programs that were introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, like the expansion of SNAP benefits and the Child Tax Credit, which cut child poverty in the U.S. nearly by half,” Mr. Cid-Martinez said. Child poverty rebounded quickly after the programs expired; SNAP benefits have since been slashed further by the law that established Trump accounts.
The New York Times
July 13, 2026
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
July 13, 2026
Nationally, wage theft is a multibillion-dollar problem. Between 2017 and 2020, more than $3 billion in stolen wages was recovered on behalf of workers by the U.S. Department of Labor, state labor departments and attorneys general, and through class and collective action litigation, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Chicago Sun Times
July 13, 2026
It was the neoliberal corporate Democrats who got it wrong. They abandoned working families beginning in the 1970s, paving the road to Trump. Their critics got it right, including my own work and the work of The American Prospect, and another institution that I co-founded, the Economic Policy Institute.
American Prospect
July 13, 2026
A 2019 Maine Center for Economic Policy analysis, citing an Economic Policy Institute report based on NCES survey data, estimated Maine public school teachers spent an average of $356 annually on supplies for students.
Portland Press Herald
July 13, 2026
Following Trump’s federal layoffs last year, in which 277,000 federal employees were permanently laid off, a report from Economic Policy Institute economist Valerie Wilson drew the connection between the layoffs and the decline in Black female unemployment.
The City Reporter (NYC)
July 13, 2026
Nowadays, “childcare is more expensive than rent in 17 states and Washington, D.C.,” according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
MoneyWise
July 13, 2026