Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz said noncompete contracts are typically used to keep workers from a source of power: quitting and taking another job.
Shierholz said because noncompete contracts prevent people from resigning to work elsewhere, they keep wages low and contribute to a mismatch in the labor market.
“Noncompetes keep people locked in jobs that aren’t necessarily the best job for them,” Shierholz said. “Our whole economy works better when there are good matches between jobs and workers.”
Spartan Newsroom
February 3, 2023
“The labor market is pretty strong,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, in an interview in advance of Friday’s report. “The unemployment rate is low, and there are still people who have not returned to the labor market after the pandemic, so we can expect the labor force can grow. But we’ve had an incredible couple of years of recovery.”
NBC News
February 3, 2023
Kailey Leinz & Kriti Gupta bring you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before and after the closing bell on Wall Street and tackles credit card earnings, a possible trillion-dollar coin and labor strikes Guests Today: Mark Lehmann of JMP Securities, Kayla Bruun of Morning Consult, Kristin Johnson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Lisa Ellis of SVB MoffettNathanson, Steve Chiavarone of Federated Hermes, Stacy Rasgon of Bernstein Research, Stephen Schork of the Schork Group, Jennifer Sherer of the Economic Policy Institute (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg TV
February 3, 2023
Conversations about domestic labor—cleaning, child rearing, cooking—carry a lot of emotional baggage and inherently have a racial dimension. In an online sphere dominated by the voices of lily-white momfluencers, it only makes sense that women of color—who, according to the Economic Policy Institute, make up a disproportionate share of domestic workers—would be uninterested in, or resentful of, white women’s opinions on a Japanese woman’s choices.
Jezebel
February 3, 2023
CEOs still aren’t exactly hurting. The heads of the biggest US companies made 399 times more than the average worker in 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute, an almost 20-fold increase in the pay ratio since 1965.—SK
Morning Brew
February 3, 2023
An analysis of 11 occupations where misclassification is common—including in construction, security, and janitorial services—by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that on average workers lose out on up to $9,820 yearly in those industries when they are illegally classified as independent contractors instead of employees.
Bloomberg Law
February 3, 2023
Biden and other members of the administration have vaunted rising wages as proof of a thriving economy. And it’s true, wages are up — nominal wage growth for nonfarm employees was up 5.1% in the 12 months ending in November, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Examiner
February 3, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, low wages hurt all workers, but especially Black workers and workers of color. Additionally, low wages put women of color at a major disadvantage, as they are often underpaid.
Grand Valley Lanthorn
February 3, 2023
According to a 29-page report from The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the main drivers of the teacher shortage are not only compensation and stress, but also a lack of interest in the field. EPI is a non-partisan national think tank that researches economic trends and policies in the United States.
NJ.com
February 3, 2023
The report said Colorado educators make about 36 percent less compared to other professionals with the same amount of education, citing research by the Economic Policy Institute. Colorado educators make on average $60,000 a year.
Colorado Public Radio
February 3, 2023
Noncompete are agreements that ensure employees will not enrich a competing business either during or after the business relationship. They can place many limits on current and former employees, from when or even where they can work. Noncompetes can be provisions in an employment contract or a standalone agreement. And they are not uncommon. In 2019, the Economic Policy Institute reported that 32% of the private sector businesses reported that employees signed a noncompete agreement.
Minnesota Lawyer
February 3, 2023
And Black Americans also face disparities in employment; the typical white worker earns more than 24 percent per hour more than the typical Black worker, according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
February 3, 2023
A report from the Economic Policy Institute cites a finding that 51.6% of North Carolina employers require at least one employee to sign a non-compete agreement and 29% require all their employees to sign one. These percentages are among the highest of the larger states and underscore the pervasiveness of this practice.
NC Policy Watch
February 3, 2023
People who took out student loans and attended some college — but didn’t finish and earn a bachelor’s degree — can land in a tough spot. Though they tend to have lower loan balances, they also don’t enjoy the 66% average income bump that college graduates have compared to high school graduates with some college, per 2017 data from the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
NerdWallet
February 3, 2023
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said the changes in resignations are negligible and that labor…(paywall).
The Epoch Times
February 3, 2023
US employers spend an estimated $340m annually on hiring union avoidance consultants to oppose unionization efforts and employers are charged with violating federal labor law in 41.5% of all union elections, according to a 2019 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
February 3, 2023
A majority of farmworkers, or 68%, reported that they’re employed by farm labor contractors rather than by growers or farmers directly. Nationwide, farm labor contractors were found to be the biggest violators of federal wage and hour laws, according to a separate 2020 study conducted by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Sacramento Bee
February 3, 2023
These restrictions have caused alarm among economists and worker advocates. The Economic Policy Institute has found that noncompete clauses have fueled rising inequality by reducing “labor market fluidity” — that is, the ability for workers to change jobs. One of the primary ways a nonunion worker can bargain for a better wage is to threaten to leave for a better paid position elsewhere, a dynamic that is eliminated by noncompete clauses.
The Intercept
February 3, 2023
Using minimum wage data from the Economic Policy Institute, Zillow analyzed how many full-time minimum-wage jobs would be required to afford the typical rent in the 50 largest U.S. cities and in the U.S. overall.
WRAL.com
February 3, 2023
A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that, in 2021, teachers made on average 23.5 percent less weekly than other college graduates, or about 76 cents on the dollar — a record high disparity for teacher salaries. This difference exists regardless of the common argument against raising teacher pay that teachers get summers off, EPI found, as the number of hours a teacher works weekly is comparable to that of other workers.
Truthout
February 3, 2023
Many minority groups are more likely to have no retirement savings at all, according to the Economic Policy Institute (paywall).
MarketWatch
February 3, 2023
Local 1 staffer Adam Stant (who was not subject to layoff) says that these layoffs come at a moment when the labor movement should be hiring, not firing, organizers. An Economic Policy Institute report presents evidence that suggests 60 million workers would join a union if they could. Some labor observers argue that the bottleneck preventing these workers from having a union is unions themselves.
In These Times
February 3, 2023
According to a 2022 report by Economic Policy Institute researchers Valerie Wilson and William Darity Jr., net productivity per work hour rose 69.6% between 1979 and 2019 while median wages for Blacks grew 5.2% compared to 20% for whites.
Charlotte Post
February 3, 2023
The Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that the wage gap between white and Black workers is narrower among postal workers than among private sector employees. The Economic Policy Institute has found that Black workers’ share of USPS jobs is significantly higher than their share of all public sector jobs.
Inequality.org
February 3, 2023
Links to Daniel’s blog post on California legislation on labor recruiters.
LA Times
February 3, 2023
On Tuesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released state and unemployment data for December 2022, which the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) used to analyze employment changes for the entire year.
AFL-CIO
February 3, 2023
Slower wage growth on its own isn’t great for workers. But inflation has also been slowing down at a faster rate, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
February 3, 2023
“Productive aging” — that’s a good one. Sounds reasonable while being utterly vacuous. Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute provides a concise translation: “Raise the retirement age.”
LA Times
February 3, 2023
I talked to three people who want to make it harder for employers to misclassify workers: Nick Hanauer, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded Civic Ventures, a public policy incubator in Seattle; Heidi Shierholz, the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on low- and middle-income workers; and David Weil, who ran the wage and hour division of the Department of Labor during the Obama administration but was rejected by the Senate for the same job in the Biden administration.
New York Times
February 3, 2023