According to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, and the region has the highest level of child poverty in the country. Wages are low, and public services are woefully underfunded.
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The “economic model of the South” — which Alabama governor Kay Ivey recently described as under attack by the UAW organizing drives across the region — is one characterized by low wages. Corporations have long scrambled to take advantage of this model, draining resources from the region to line the pockets of the rich on Wall Street.
Jacobin
June 17, 2024
Perhaps no single chart has been as influential in the American discourse over the past decade as the “productivity vs. pay” graph. There are many versions of this graph floating around, but I’m going to use the versions published by the Economic Policy Institute. Here is probably the most famous version of the chart — the version that most of us used when we debated the issue back in the late 2010s: [paywall].
Noah Smith's blog
June 17, 2024
By either calculation, of course, contemporary U.S. CEOs are making fantastically more than their CEO counterparts back in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1960s, the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out, chief execs at major U.S. corporations seldom pocketed much more than 20 times the pay that went to their workers. Since then, the CEO-worker pay gap has quadrupled — and then quadrupled again.
Inequality.org
June 17, 2024
In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute reported that CEO pay averaged 344 times more than worker pay, up from 21 times more in 1965. Income inequality stifles economic growth and concentrates political power to corporations and to the wealthy.
WVPE (NPR affiliate in Michigan)
June 17, 2024
From 1979 to 2013, hourly pay for middle-wage workers increased 6% and pay for low-wage workers decreased 5%, whereas pay for very high-wage workers increased 41%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
CNET
June 17, 2024
Likewise, a May 15 news release from the BLS highlighting real earnings in April 2024 reports an “0.2% increase in average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 0.3% in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).” The release was cited in a blog post from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published on the same day.
Check Your Fact
June 17, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute found that realized equity compensation made up more than 81 percent of total average realized CEO pay at big corporations in 2022.
Inequality.org
June 17, 2024
Some minimum-wage workers saw increases, too, but not enough to impact inflation rates. A study from the Economic Policy Institute found that minimum wage increases, even if instituted in every state, would have a negligible impact on inflation — meaning the share of workers in this category is too small to drive up prices.
KTVQ
June 17, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute found the average yearly cost of infant child care is more than $15,000, which then drops to almost $13,000 for a 4-year-old.
Public News Service
June 17, 2024
Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research with the Economic Policy Institute, says both Democrats and Republicans, representing employer interests ranging from seafood to hospitality, have perpetuated the silencing of some H-2B worker protections. He said the nature of last-minute continuing resolutions on federal budgets means rules get frozen in place.
“If President Biden listened to immigration worker advocates on H-2B, what will he do? ‘Am I going to shut down the entire government over the H-2B riders?’” Costa said. “That’s why [the budget riders] are so [politically] smart.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
June 17, 2024
A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Florida has the highest minimum wage violation rate in the country, with data suggesting that one in four low-wage workers had been paid less than minimum wage. Alexis Tsoukalas, a policy analyst with the Florida Policy Institute — an EPI affiliate — told Orlando Weekly that her nonprofit is concerned the problem could get worse as Florida’s minimum wage rises.
Orlando Weekly
June 17, 2024
In a Tuesday webinar on “Organizing, Collective Action, and the National Labor Relations Board” hosted by the Economic Policy Institute, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo shared her perspective on the current state of American labor law.
Alabama Political Reporter
June 17, 2024
But if the solution is expanding legal pathways to working in the U.S., how would that work? Daniel Costa, who studies immigration policy at the Economic Policy Institute, has one proposal.
DANIEL COSTA: EPI has proposed for years having a commission on immigration in the labor market that studies the health of the economy and makes recommendations about where the level should be. I think it’s a really common-sense idea that would take into account that pull factor that we’re talking about.
MA: Yeah. And, in fact, there’s already something we have like this for trade. The U.S. International Trade Commission is this bipartisan body that helps shape trade policy based on economic conditions.
WONG: But Daniel also adds a note of caution. If expanding legal pathways means expanding temporary work visas, that program has its own problems for the workers who are granted those visas.
COSTA: They come with visas that are essentially owned and controlled by employers who control their immigration status. And so, in practice, they don’t have a lot of rights.
NPR Planet Money
June 17, 2024
Studies show that gender price discrimination can cost women in practical, physical, and financial ways. Data from the Economic Policy Institute show that women still make about twenty percent less on the dollar than men.
Kiplinger
June 17, 2024
Twenty-two states increased their minimum wage this year, which is especially pertinent to an industry that employs high numbers of minimum- and low-wage workers, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.
Stacker
June 17, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute’s Wage Tracker, 92 percent of Dollar General workers earn less than $15/hour.
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
June 17, 2024
We know about the theory of “greedflation” exhibited by corporations since the COVID pandemic. Corporate profiteering was responsible for more than half of the increase in prices between 2020 and 2021, per the Economic Policy Institute.
The American Prospect
June 17, 2024
Perhaps no single chart has been as influential in the American discourse over the past decade as the “productivity vs. pay” graph. There are many versions of this graph floating around, but I’m going to use the versions published by the Economic Policy Institute. Here is probably the most famous version of the chart — the version that most of us used when we debated the issue back in the late 2010s: [paywall].
Noah Smith's blog
June 14, 2024
By either calculation, of course, contemporary U.S. CEOs are making fantastically more than their CEO counterparts back in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1960s, the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out, chief execs at major U.S. corporations seldom pocketed much more than 20 times the pay that went to their workers. Since then, the CEO-worker pay gap has quadrupled — and then quadrupled again.
Inequality.org
June 14, 2024
Historically disadvantaged groups are disproportionately employed in low-wage jobs. According to a recent Economic Policy Institute analysis of wage and census data, real wages – that is, adjusted for inflation – among low-income workers were 12% percent higher in 2023 than they were in 2019.
Nevada Current
June 10, 2024
The Labor Department estimates the reform would transfer $1.5 billion a year from employers to employees in the form of higher wages. The benefits would go disproportionately to workers who are women and people of color, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
Huffpost
June 10, 2024
Women and people of color are disproportionately represented in certain restaurant roles. For example, Hispanic people are more likely to be staffed as dishwashers or cooks, according to an Economic Policy Institute report.
Grist
June 10, 2024
“While top management often shows great interest in keeping down other costs for the company, it has no interest in keeping down its own pay. If the firm’s directors are not actively working to limit CEO pay, then no one is,” economist and CEO pay expert Dean Baker wrote in a research paper published by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Yahoo Finance
June 10, 2024
And a new blog from a think tank that often backs higher wages and union causes last week criticized the nursing home sector’s continued insistence that more direct care staff is not readily available.
Monique Morrissey, senior economist for The Economic Policy Institute said her organizations were pushing back “against unfounded industry claims of a worker shortage that would prevent nursing homes from meeting the new standard.”
“The nursing home industry has attempted to equate a staffing decline with a worker shortage,” she wrote. “But this decline mirrored a decline in occupancy, and, if anything, suggests that there’s a pool of sidelined workers who could be lured back if pay and working conditions improved. This is true in both urban and rural areas. …
McKnight’s Senior Living
June 10, 2024
Connecticut pulled ahead of Massachusetts, where the minimum wage hit $15 in 2023 and has not increased since. Connecticut now boasts the fourth highest minimum wage in the United States, behind California ($16), Washington ($16.28) and Washington, D.C., ($17), according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Connecticut Public Radio
June 10, 2024
Pro-union scholars and attorneys see Lion Elastomers and Atlantic Steel as a step toward protecting employees’ free speech in the workplace. Charlotte Garden, a labor law professor at the University of Minnesota, wrote in a 2022 report for the Economic Policy Institute that the issue “illustrates how employers can weaponize workplace civility rules when they create upsetting situations and then punish workers for becoming upset.”
Bloomberg Law
June 10, 2024
“We obviously need to watch out for what’s happening with historically marginalized groups to make sure that the recovery gets experienced,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
But Gould isn’t particularly worried about the uptick in jobless rates for certain demographics just yet. “We’re not seeing any real divergence from trends there,” she added.
CNBC
June 10, 2024
Instead, the opposite happened. A recent analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, the lowest-paid decile of workers saw their wages rise four times faster than middle-class workers and more than 10 times faster than the richest decile. A recent working paper by Dube and two co-authors reached similar conclusions.
The Atlantic
June 10, 2024
by one estimate from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 4.3 million salaried employees are now poised to receive pay for exceeding normal work times — long hours during which they previously would have labored, effectively, for free.
Truthout
June 10, 2024