“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
While in office, Trump set the overtime salary threshold lower than the one that had been set in a rule but had been blocked under former President Barack Obama, leaving millions of workers ineligible for automatic overtime, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Michigan Independent
October 7, 2024
Special Guest: Heidi Shierholz
Heidi is President of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Under her leadership, EPI has fought for legislative and regulatory reforms that support collective bargaining, increase worker power, improve wages, benefits, and working conditions, and reduce racial and gender inequities. Heidi is a Former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor under President Obama. As Chief Economist for the DOL, she focused on boosting workers’ rights, wages, and benefits.
Maggie and the Millionaires Podcast
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
Fiscal Times
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
The average annual cost for infant care in Massachusetts is $21,913, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For one child, that’s 22.7% of a median family’s income, or 41 weeks of full time pay for a minimum wage worker.
NBC Boston
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.”
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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
A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida had the highest rate of minimum wage violations among the country’s 10 most populated states, beating out other populous states like New York, California and Texas.
Orlando Weekly
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