And, as the Economic Policy Institute notes, “a majority of workers in the United States across all sectors—59 percent—support unionization in their own workplace.” That means that there are literally millions of workers who are up for joining a union. What they need is a government that is explicitly, and aggressively, on the side of working-class Americans.
Between 2019 and 2023, the number of U.S. school bus drivers fell by 15 percent. Those who remain still don’t make much money: an average of $20 an hour, with just 32 hours of work a week, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
(The Groundwork Collaborative said it analyzed November 2023 data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis using the same approach that economist Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, used for his 2022 corporate profit and inflation analysis.)
CEO compensation has ballooned since the late 1970s. Compensation of the country’s top CEOs at public firms increased 1,460 percent from 1978 to 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. For every dollar the average worker earns, a CEO makes about $400.
“Donald Trump knows how to take advantage of working people,” he said as part of an accusation against Trump for “waging war on workers and the middle class.” Walz also criticized Trump for blocking efforts to raise the minimum wage and for supporting right-to-work laws, which he said weaken unions and undermine workers’ rights.
Fact check: Trump did oppose efforts to raise the federal minimum wage because he said it was up to the individual states to address. According to Politico, he also supported “right-to-work” laws, which are widely criticized for weakening unions by reducing their financial resources and undermining workers’ rights and collective bargaining power. Trump’s administration did roll back numerous worker protections and regulations designed to safeguard labor rights, as detailed in this report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Many of the pathways to wealth that were available for baby boomers or even Gen X are much narrower for Gen Z, says Kyle K. Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“We live in a country where wealth is really important to securing economic well-being,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of vehicles to build wealth.”
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The sentiment extends to retirement and overall financial happiness, Moore says. “If you talk to Gen Z about whether they are going to retire, a lot of them might laugh at you.”
Even if their parents or grandparents were able to retire at 65, many young people are witnessing the elderly in their lives struggle to exist comfortably.
“I think Gen Z and millennials have the lived experience of seeing parents and grandparents not having what they thought they would have and continue to work longer than they anticipated working,” Moore says.
To buttress their arguments against Trump, speakers at the event said the former president named corporate lawyers to the National Labor Relations Board, which then “systematically rolled back workers’ rights to form unions and engage in collective bargaining with their employers” and sought to enact rules “aimed at overturning existing worker protections,” according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group that has received some funding from labor unions.
When Mr. Biden took office, however, his appointees made it easier for workers to form unions, EPI said.
“People might have been attached to prices of things where they were before,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank. “They have a meaning even if those goods are still affordable. There may be expectations about how much things are supposed to cost that haven’t caught up to reality, even if incomes have gone up.”
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Gould, of the EPI, said that a combination of factors — including states increasing their minimum wages and economic policies keeping the economy near full employment, including government spending — have allowed Americans’ purchasing power to come out ahead.
“Over the past four years, middle-wage workers have been beating inflation,” she said.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost of infant care in Oregon is $1,135/month which seems like a bargain compared to the $1,900 per month that my family paid in Portland.
Teachers are paid less than others in occupations requiring similar education, according to the Educate Maine report. The Economic Policy Institute found that Maine teachers made 24 percent less than comparable workers statewide in 2021, the 16th highest pay penalty in the nation.