If every state were to make school workers outside the classroom eligible for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, employees would collectively earn $1.2 billion more per year than they currently do, according to a forthcoming data analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Spending on K-12 education would increase by no more than half of 1 percent in any state if workers claimed unemployment benefits at the same rate they did during the first summer the Minnesota law was in effect, according to the group’s research.
“We have created a series of jobs that are vitally important to the teaching of our kids but we don’t give them year-round wages, and they don’t even get 40 hours a week,” said Dave Kamper, a state policy strategist for EPI, who helped craft and study the potential impact of the Minnesota legislation. “By taking that job, they’re foreclosing the possibility of full-time employment year-round. UI is a reasonable step to address that.”
Education Week
August 20, 2024
What Democrats can point out in defense is rising wages relative to inflation. According to the Economic Policy Institute, average wages have beat the rise of inflation for the past year. Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) noted that in a recent post.
Washington Examiner
August 20, 2024
The inflation-adjusted wage spike early in the pandemic was somewhat misleading, both because 20 million low-wage service workers left the workforce temporarily and because prices for some things such as gasoline temporarily plummeted, noted Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
As the economic recovery has progressed, workers are doing slightly better, Bivens said.
“On the one hand, all else equal, you’d want better wage growth over four and a half years,” Bivens said. “On the other hand, we suffered a horrible economic shock in that period. Relative to other recessions and recoveries, this is superb wage performance, even with the inflation.”
Stateline
August 20, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute warned that eliminating taxes on tips could encourage companies to shift to more tipped occupations and prevent them from offering higher and more competitive wages.
Nevada Current
August 20, 2024
…current job, then you should change jobs.” (Research from the Economic Policy Institute indicates that since 2007 US employees have…[paywall].
Business Insider
August 20, 2024
This financial incentive mechanism seems to be unique to Connecticut, according to Terri Gerstein, a workers’ rights lawyer of more than 20 years who served in leadership roles within labor departments in New York, was a researcher at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute and now heads the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative.
The CT Mirror
August 20, 2024
“We would definitely still think that there’s a teacher shortage. It is improved in some ways, and in other ways, it’s stayed the same,” said Hilary Wething, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think there is some good news in that we’ve seen state and local education employment fully recover to pre-COVID levels, to February 2020 levels, of employment, but that’s not really the full context, because the employment levels in that industry in February of 2020 were still below what we would expect to have a fully robust education employment in our country,” Wething added.
The Hill
August 20, 2024
“I’m not at all saying that workers won’t get anything,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “But I think that a meaningful share of the [federal] expenditures on a tax exemption like this will go to the employers of tipped workers.”
That might be why industry lobbyists have backed the proposal. “It’s not a surprise that the National Restaurant Association loves this,” Shierholz said, referring to the lobbying group that represents many of the country’s major restaurant chains.
At worst, the tax policy might even put a downward pressure on service sector wages by allowing employers to keep their workers’ baseline pay low because the tax cut could instead raise the workers’ take-home pay.
“I think there is no question that it would” weigh wages down, Shierholz said. The only question, she says, is just how much.
So while “no tax on tips” might make for a good sound bite or campaign slogan, it doesn’t necessarily translate to wise policymaking.
VOX
August 20, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-union persuaders each year, although due to lackluster enforcement of reporting requirements, not all of it is publicly reported. Employers, by law, must also file reports, known as LM-10s, detailing how much they’ve spent on this persuader activity.
Orlando Weekly
August 20, 2024
E & E News
August 20, 2024