Media clips

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• Labor leaders object to Iowa State child labor law

  ”We really can’t characterize this as anything other than a crisis”, said Jen Scheer, senior state policy coordinator for the economic policy institute.

  She says child labor laws enacted last year in Iowa are violating the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. ”Those provisions that were included in the 2023 Iowa law… are in direct conflict with federal law.”

  KCRG (Iowa) July 17, 2024
• Actually, the Job Market Isn’t So Bad for Gen Z College Grads

  Labor data shows that underemployment — the rate of those with college degrees who are working jobs that don’t require degrees — has always been higher among recent graduates compared with all bachelor’s degree holders.

  “They go ahead and get that college degree and then they can’t get on a career track that uses that education,” says Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank.

  NerdWallet July 17, 2024
• Jobs for New Grads: How Does Gen Z Stack Up Against X and Y?

  Coming out of the Great Recession, the prolonged recovery delayed recent graduates’ ability to get on the career track by five to 10 years, says Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank. She adds, “It definitely has had an impact on their lifetime earnings.”

  Meanwhile, even though Gen Z suffered a high unemployment rate in 2020 due to the pandemic, the labor market swiftly rebounded. It was such a quick and strong bounceback, says Gould, that the pandemic recession is likely to be just a blip in Gen Z’s careers and, importantly, is unlikely to eat into lifetime earnings.

  “Their outcomes are much better than they would have been, say, a generation prior,” says Gould.

  NerdWallet July 17, 2024
• RNC speakers claim economy does better under Republican leadership

  The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) recently updated a decade-long study that shows the American economy overall actually does better historically when a Democrat is in the White House:

  Racine County Eye July 15, 2024
• Food Stamps Go Further in Rural Areas — Until You Add Transportation Costs

  That’s because recreation-dependent counties tend to have higher-than-average costs of living compared to other rural counties. In 2023, the average household income needed to support a family of four in rural recreation communities was $97,800, compared to $88,900 in other rural counties, according to a dataset compiled by the Economic Policy Institute.

  Daily Yonder July 15, 2024
• Maximizing CHIPS Subsidy Benefits for Workers — Not CEOs

  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 July 15, 2024
• Trump’s Tax-Free Tips Idea Attracts Even Once-Wary Democrats

  Adopting this tax policy may also result in employers resisting wage hikes, using the workers’ new tax benefit as an excuse to keep pay stagnant, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Businesses also could adopt a tipping model that would move their workers into a lower-wage category, cutting their labor costs, she added.

  Bloomberg Law July 15, 2024
• What a Kroger-Albertsons Merger Could Mean for Grocery Shoppers

  “An unmistakable theme of the Biden administration’s antitrust program has been to give greater emphasis to the effect that business behavior has on worker welfare,” Kovacic says.

  It also reflects the recent growth of unions in the private sector. In 2023, the unionization level in the private sector rose from 6.8% to 6.9% — an increase of more than 261,000 unionized workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  NerdWallet July 15, 2024
• “Project 2025 eliminates OSHA and overtime wages.”

  The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C.-based think tank, put that number at 4.3 million workers.

  Politifact July 15, 2024
• Kids in the workforce: Child labor laws differ in Iowa and Illinois

  Economic Policy Institute Director of State Worker Power Project Jennifer Sherer says Iowa’s child labor law is one of the most extreme in the nation.

  “We have been tracking for a couple of years now the alarming trend that there are several states across the country that have actively been attempting to weaken child labor protections just at the same time as violations of child labor standards nationally have been on the rise over the last decade,” Sherer said in a phone interview with WVIK. “And digging into this, it’s very clear that what’s behind this is a coordinated multi-industry attempt to weaken child labor standards and expand employer access to low-wage labor essentially.”

  Quad Cities NPR July 15, 2024