The meme claimed real weekly wages increased 8.2% under Trump and fell 3.9% under Biden. The data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and charted by the St. Louis Fed showed that, indeed, real wages rocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a historical height of $393 — a number based on 1982-84 inflation-adjusted dollars — in the second quarter of 2020.
This is due to the fact that low-paying jobs disappeared during the height of the pandemic while workers with higher-paying jobs adapted to remote work, pushing the average up, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Snopes
October 1, 2024
…between employers and unionized employees to take time; the Economic Policy Institute and the Department of Labor both say it often takes…[paywall].
Salt Lake Tribune
October 1, 2024
In an August 2023 blog post, he argued that the estimate of indirect and induced jobs in the API report was derived using “exaggerated multipliers” and “double counting.” In an email to us, O’Leary — using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the partially labor union-funded Economic Policy Institute — estimated that there were 55,509 fracking-related jobs in Pennsylvania in 2023, of which 18,636 were direct jobs and the rest were indirect and induced jobs.
FactCheck.org
October 1, 2024
According to a published 2019 report, the Economic Policy Institute found that the poverty rate among restaurant workers in those states was significantly lower than in states that do not require employers to pay the state minimum wage.
Worcester Telegram and Gazette (Massachusetts)
October 1, 2024
Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank funded by labor unions, wrote in June that a mass deportation would create particularly bad bottlenecks in the food supply chain. He added construction to the list of acutely vulnerable sectors in an emailed statement to Business Insider and said that “the upward price pressure could be significant and pretty long-lasting.”
Business Insider
October 1, 2024
There’s an interesting history to why, nicely reviewed for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) by Nina Mast. As with so much in American life, the full history goes back to slavery, or, more precisely, the period just after Emancipation. Former slaves often found employment in food service and other service jobs, but, as Mast puts it, “instead of paying Black workers any wage at all, employers suggested that guests offer Black workers a small tip for their services.”
Jacobin
October 1, 2024
Consider CEO pay (a glaring lacuna in the Business Roundtable’s 2019 missive about the new era of corporate responsibility). A report from the Economic Policy Institute found that in 2022, the projected average compensation of CEOs at the 350 largest publicly owned US companies was $25.2 million. Meanwhile, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was approximately 344-to-one, meaning it would take nearly 350 years for a typical employee to match what their CEO made in just one year. Compare that with 1965 when the ratio was 21-to-one.
Bloomberg
October 1, 2024
“Michigan’s in the process right now of reversing a lot of damage that was done to its state labor laws, and you could foresee that they might join some other states who have begun to get more ambitious,” said Jennifer Sherer, acting deputy director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network.
Sherer said the Michigan bills reflect a broader trend across states including Montana, Missouri, Illinois and New Hampshire, where lawmakers and residents have voted down right-to-work legislation and ballot initiatives.
Capital & Main
October 1, 2024
The average American needs to be making an average annual income of at least $421,926 in order to be considered part of the top 1%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The average income of everyone else (the “bottom 99%”) is $50,107.
MoneyWise
October 1, 2024
The political and union “concerns are linked and related,” said Jennifer Sherer, who leads the Worker Power Project at the Economic Policy Institute. “The vast majority of workers are in a position where if they decline an employer request, even if it’s something that might seem outlandish” such as attending a political candidate visit to the workplace or a Bible study, “most workers have a reasonable fear that could come with some consequence.”
Bloomberg Law
October 1, 2024