“Are some folks still having a hard time? Absolutely,” noted EPI senior economist Elise Gould in a blog post. “Even when the unemployment rate is low, there are still sidelined workers, and it remains difficult for many families to make ends meet on wages that are still too low.”
CBS Moneywatch
October 7, 2024
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, state and local government employees earned, on average, about 10% less in total compensation—including pay and benefits—than their private-sector peers, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that receives some funding from labor unions. Post-COVID, that gap has only widened to about 14.5% less.
Route Fifty
October 7, 2024
“As a bundle, the policies are pretty terrible,” Dr. Josh Bivens, a Chief Economist and Senior Researcher with the Economic Policy Institute said. “They will raise taxes on the vast majority of households on net while cutting taxes for the very rich and maintaining the tax cuts on corporations. They will create all sorts of weird unintended effects. No big problem currently facing US working families is really addressed.
“If they’re all undertaken, it is a near guarantee that the result would be higher interest rates and higher inflation,” Bivens said.
The Independent
October 7, 2024
Although anxiety spiked following a weaker-than-expected July jobs report coupled with a drastic downward annual employment numbers revision, August’s solid job gains and Friday’s report — which included upward revisions to both July and August — should put those concerns to rest, Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview.
“The labor market is strong,” she said. “When we compare it to four years ago, during the pandemic, it’s clearly much stronger; but even when you compare it to 2019, before the pandemic began. Real wage growth is up, a lot of jobs have been added.”
CNN Business
October 7, 2024
Last week the Immigration Research Initiative in New York and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., co-released a one-page infographic showing how immigration benefits the U.S. economy.
Together, immigrant workers and business owners generated $19 trillion in economic output in the U.S. in 2022, the groups reported.
Wisconsin Examiner
October 7, 2024
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit, said it is a “baseless conspiracy theory that nonpartisan BLS employees are committing fraud.”
…
Rubio’s claims are “deeply corrosive because of the trust put in [BLS] numbers,” said Shierholz, who is also a labor economist.
“They’re used to set policy, including the Federal Reserve’s incredibly impactful decisions about interest rate policy,” she said. “We need people to know they’re doing good work and that they should answer correctly to the surveys.”
The Washington Post
October 7, 2024
Instead of fighting to bring back a more rigorous duties test, the Department of Labor chose the “brighter line” of raising the salary threshold, said Heidi Shierholz, the Economic Policy Institute’s president. Before the July bump, only 8.5 percent of salaried workers fell under the threshold. By January, that proportion could rise to 30 percent—covering plenty of those assistant bingo managers—and the threshold will update every three years, rising in tandem with wage data.
In the short term, the benefits are clear. If your employer decides to “bump you up to the new salary threshold, then you get that wage increase,” Shierholz explained. If not—if you remain below the cutoff— “then now you’re in the world where your employer has skin in the game when they ask you to work a gajillion hours,” since that extra labor will no longer be free. “You either get more money,” she said, “or you get your time back.”
The Nation
October 7, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 24% of Latina mothers live in poverty compared to 12% of white, non-Hispanic mothers. The stark reality is that without significant changes, this pay gap will continue to affect the livelihoods and futures of millions of Latino families.
Our Latinx Magazine
October 7, 2024
Fiscal Times
October 7, 2024
This trend, particularly among the building trades, Ascher said, followed the 1994 implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement — a pact among the United States, Mexico and Canada — that the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank affiliated with the labor movement, says led to the loss of thousands of union jobs.
Capital News Service Maryland
October 7, 2024