Media clips

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• Trump’s Overtime Pay Rule

  “While the administration may be trumpeting this rule as a good thing for workers, that is a ruse,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank partly funded by labor unions, wrote in a statement issued the same day. “In reality, the rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration abandoned.”

  “It’s worth noting that if the rule had simply been adjusted for inflation since 1975, today it would be roughly $56,500,” Shierholz wrote. “This is more than $20,000 higher than the Trump administration’s level! I estimate that roughly 8.2 million workers who would have benefited from the 2016 rule will be left behind by the Trump administration’s rule.”

  FactCheck.org August 20, 2024
• In Defense of Bidenomics

  What’s more, as this Economic Policy Institute analysis outlines, union election petitions were up by 53 percent in 2022, and a further 3 percent in 2023. The first half of 2023 also saw an election win rate of 80 percent, as compared to 66 percent in 2020 or less than 60 percent in the 2000s.

  American Prospect August 20, 2024
• The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for 15 years. How the election may change that

  Raising today’s federal minimum wage would help low-wage workers who are trying to earn a living and have a sense of economic security, said Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that provides economic research.

  “The minimum wage has basically lost, 29%, 30% of its purchasing power over the last 15 years, simply because Congress has failed to update it,” Zipperer said.

  Lifting the minimum wage threshold to $15 per hour would increase the incomes of about 20 million workers, Zipperer said. That would include people who are low-wage workers who may be earning hourly pay that is slightly more than the federal minimum wage threshold.

  “Changes in wages don’t necessarily result in big changes in employment,” Zipperer said.

  “When you raise wages at a particular workplace, that makes it a lot easier to recruit and retain workers,” he said.

  CNBC August 20, 2024
• Mixed bag of news on joblessness in Alabama

  The Alabama Department of Labor is out with the State’s latest unemployment report. Communities in the State’s region known as the “Black Belt” are ranked as having the highest number of residents without jobs. However, quarterly figures from the Economic Policy Institute indicate that African American workers in Alabama have had better employment levels than much of the nation.

  Alabama Public Radio August 20, 2024
• Fast Food’s Automation Problem

  In April, California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour—the culmination of a long campaign by fast food workers across the state. Even in the state’s rural inland counties, where the cost of living is lowest, the new rate isn’t enough for a single adult without children to survive working forty hours per week, every week, for the entire year, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s cost of living calculator. 

  The Progressive Magazine August 20, 2024
• Harris — like Trump — wants to stop taxing tips. That’s a bad idea.

  We’ve all noticed how tipping has spread like wildfire; it seems like almost every purchase you make is now accompanied by a request for a tip, even when you received nothing resembling “service” at all. More importantly, tipping is a practice that has deeply racist roots; as an Economic Policy Institute report notes, “Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, formerly enslaved Black workers were often relegated to service jobs (e.g., food service workers and railroad porters). However, instead of paying Black workers any wage at all, employers suggested that guests offer Black workers a small tip for their services.” 

  MSNBC.com August 20, 2024
• Harris Needs to Put Working-Class Policy Before DC Decorum

  Failing to raise the minimum wage has kept millions of low-wage workers, mostly restaurant and service industry employees, from meeting basic financial demands, according to a 2023 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on economic trends and policies affecting workers.

  Jacobin August 20, 2024
• Harris and Trump steal from each other’s playbooks on economic policies

  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
• Most workers make about the same as before the pandemic — except in these states

  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
• August 19, 2024
  August 20, 2024