Americans have long struggled to save enough for retirement, which remains a problem today. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average working household has just $95,776 saved for their golden years.
Motley Fool
July 14, 2023
The federal government has vowed to crack down on violations of child labor laws, but the Economic Policy Institute, which examines the economic impact of government policies, reports that in the last two years, at least fourteen states have either passed or introduced measures to weaken the laws protecting children from dangerous working conditions.
They permit longer work hours and more dangerous work, lower the ages for work around alcohol, or introduce new subminimum wages for children.
Milwaukee Independent
July 14, 2023
“Race-blind admissions processes will further exacerbate existing inequalities and undermine the recognition of the unique challenges that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students encounter throughout the admissions process,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. “By disregarding the significance of race, these approaches risk creating a wider divide between equal opportunity and communities of color.”
The Messenger
July 14, 2023
But a recent national survey by the Economic Policy Institute found that 29% of gig workers reported making less than the state minimum wage—which is $7.25 an hour in Texas. And studies by labor economists have estimated that actual gig-worker pay after factoring in waiting time, expenses, and the lack of benefits could be vastly lower than the rates that gig companies claim their workers make—as little as $4.82.
Fast Company
July 14, 2023
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute – a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank – reports that 14 states have introduced bills weakening child labor standards in the past two years and five state have passed them: Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and New Jersey.
“We’re seeing teens … hired into highly exploitative work that involves excessive hours, illegal exposure to either hazards or chemicals,” EPI’s Jennifer Sherer told NBC Nightly News last month.
The EPI-noted states have enacted laws extending the hours 14- and 15-year-olds can work. Bills have proposed paying young workers below a state’s minimum wage and allowing them to do more hazardous jobs.
The Journal Record (Oklahoma)
July 14, 2023
Nationwide, gains in pay for low-wage jobs have reached historic proportions, according to an Economic Policy Institute report in March. Compensation for the lowest-paid jobs rose 9% between 2019 and 2022, adjusted for inflation. That’s much higher than the 4.9% for high-wage jobs and 2.4% for middle-wage jobs. And it was the biggest bounce for low-wage workers since at least 1979, according to the report.
“The labor market is stronger now, particularly for workers who are historically disadvantaged because of their relative scarcity,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and lead author of the March report.
“Employers are scrambling to get them hired back,” she said. “They can look across the street and see better wages and bonuses.”
However, research from the Economic Policy Institute and other groups shows a continuation of the decadeslong trend of low-wage workers falling behind as rising costs outpace their incomes.
States Newsroom
July 14, 2023
At the same time, corporate boards like Walmart’s are approving executive benefits that have grown exponentially in comparison to worker pay — in fact, the Economic Policy Institute released a report stating that CEO pay has increased by 1,460% since 1978, while worker pay has increased by just 18.1%.
CNN
July 14, 2023
Based on data from The Economic Policy Institute, the merger will permanently reduce the wages of 746,000 grocery store workers in over 50 metropolitan areas with their annual incomes falling by $334 million, at least an estimated $450 loss per worker. That $450 loss may not look like much to wealthy corporate board members, but for many of Albertsons’ employees trying to raise a family on a grocery store wage, it’s a big deal and a bad deal.
Idaho Statesman
July 14, 2023
As Biden prepared to become president, one of those think tanks, the Economic Policy Institute, assembled a host of economists, unions, and other liberal groups to make the case that recovery from the pandemic collapse required extraordinary measures that would push the economy toward full employment. Within the Biden administration and among Democrats generally, those arguments prevailed.
The American Prospect
July 14, 2023
“We typically see that Black unemployment rate rises by more than other groups and I don’t necessarily have any strong reason to suspect that that wouldn’t be the case were we to head into another recession,” Valerie Wilson director of the think-tank Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy said ahead of the monthly report.
Wilson said the economic stimulus during the pandemic contributed to the relatively strong economic recovery for African Americans in the past year, but that these gains could be temporary.
Reuters
July 14, 2023
“There’s been this unprecedented gap between what the data shows us is going on in the economy and what people think is going on in the economy,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, told ABC News.
ABC News
July 14, 2023
Nineteen states, cities and counties are raising the minimum wage this summer, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.
…
About 765,000 people will get a raise this summer because of minimum wage increases. Even though they’re small, “Those wage increases are really valuable for low-wage workers who are dealing with the impacts of inflation,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey at EPI.
Marketplace
July 14, 2023
“In excess of 200,000, you’re easily pulling more workers off the sideline and you’re keeping up with the population growth. It’s strong. It’s not hot, but it’s also not cool. I think we’re in a good place right now,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
States Newsroom
July 14, 2023
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However, other economists are more optimistic about the outlook in light of the support provided by the Biden administration. “Historically, these manufacturing industries are more interest-rate sensitive than services sector industries, but I think there is enough going on with policy support and private sector investments that will be [supportive] regardless of what is going on in these areas,” said Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think-tank. “It’s really creating the demand to drive this forward.”
Financial Times
July 14, 2023
The median Wisconsin child care worker must spend 59% of their earnings to put their own child in infant care, the Economic Policy Institute found.
PBS Wisconsin
July 14, 2023
In an attempt by the think tank to find a model for sustainable growth of the U.S. economy, a new initiative proposed Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute would require companies to go back to naming products by combining what they do with the suffix “O-Matic.” “Our research shows that businesses create more value for the American economy when they take a word that describes what they do—say, investing—and then, in that case, make their brand name Invest-O-Matic,” said EPI senior fellow Ronald Wong, who found the suffix could increase company revenues by 400% within the first year after its adoption, and sometimes more if the number 5000 was placed at the end of the name.
The Onion
July 14, 2023
Her solutions matrix has its origins in more than two decades of experience of working with affordable-housing developers and local government officials. She co-wrote the book with her father Richard Rothstein, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. Their work is a sequel to the elder Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
American Prospect
July 14, 2023
The death comes amid a push over the last two years to loosen regulations governing what jobs minors can perform in the workplace. Lawmakers in 14 states — including Wisconsin — have proposed rolling back child labor laws, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.
“The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections,” the organization wrote in a May blog post. “And the recent uptick in state legislative activity is linked to longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country.”
Wausau Pilot and Review
July 14, 2023
Experts differ on what constitutes a living wage. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that an individual needs to make $49,000 a year to live in metropolitan Los Angeles. MIT’s living wage calculator lists an average for one childless adult at $21.53 an hour. A recent federal report said workers “earning the federal or prevailing state or local minimum wage” cannot afford a modest two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent anywhere in the United States.
LA Times
July 14, 2023
In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests calling for justice following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, right-wing backlash has taken concrete form in highly coordinated campaigns against books, programs, or curricular resources designed to analyze and address systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. Over the past two years in state legislatures across the United States, campaigns targeting a caricatured version of “critical race theory” (CRT) have evolved into intertwined attacks on truth itself and the workplace rights of teachers, librarians, and other educators.
Common Dreams
July 14, 2023
And is your portfolio size large enough for this strategy to succeed? The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that the median retirement savings for Americans was about $95,000. That amount of money would not produce nearly enough dividend or interest income to provide what ChatGPT calls a “steady cash flow while potentially preserving your principal.”
The Street
July 14, 2023
Last year 120,600 workers nationwide participated in major strikes (work stoppages involving 1,000 workers or more), a 50% increase over 2021 but a fraction of the strike activity during its height in the 1970s, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CalMatters
July 14, 2023
Quotes Valerie Wilson. [Paywall].
The Wall Street Journal
July 14, 2023
George said more union interest is emerging among workers. A 2023 report by the Economic Policy Institute found an uptick in union-organizing activity nationally in 2022. The report says there is evidence many more workers would like to form a union but face barriers doing so.
Dakota News Now
July 14, 2023
For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Economic Policy Institute found that 17% of people considered to be frontline workers were black. They were the transit, healthcare, delivery and grocery store workers who kept our country going at great risk for themselves and their families, all while struggling with more pre-existing conditions that made them especially vulnerable to the virus.
MSNBC
July 14, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute found that 65.1 percent of workers do not have a college degree.
The Daily Mail
July 14, 2023
Large tech companies remain the biggest beneficiaries of the H1-B foreign worker visa program. Here’s why. [Paywall].
The Business Journals
July 14, 2023
According to Elise Gould, an economist at the Washington-based non-profit the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), workers on lower incomes generally take fewer vacations.
“Vacation time in this country is incredibly skewed towards people with higher incomes, so that it is much less likely that somebody who makes lower wages gets it,” she told Newsweek. “About 95 percent of the highest-wage workers actually do get paid vacation days and only 44 percent—less than half—of lower-wage workers get any paid vacation days.”
Newsweek
July 14, 2023
In Pennsylvania, Black workers have seen some of the largest gains in employment, with the Black unemployment rate falling by nearly 17 percent since the second quarter of 2020, an Economic Policy Institute analysis found.
The Washington Post
July 14, 2023