Analysts with the Economic Policy Institute found that foreign-born workers account for around 50 percent of the labor market’s explosive growth, while the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that immigrant labor effectively closed the post-Covid gap in the job market by the middle of 2022.
The Nation
March 4, 2024
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, noted that external data could be helpful to flag unusual phenomenon occurring among contractors in the labor force or inform the BLS of how to structure survey questions they may not have asked otherwise.
“There’s clearly legislation, regulation around the issue of independent contracting,” Shierholz, who served as the chief economist at the DOL under Obama, said. “So really understanding the scope, and the nature of that kind of work just makes that kind of policy smarter.”
Bloomberg Law
March 4, 2024
“A lot of these rollbacks that we are starting to see really came in the wake of the pandemic,” Nina Mast, a state economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, said.
Since 2021, Mast says, “28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them.” Some of the states exploring or enacting such legislation include Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and Missouri, to name a few.
“As wages have increased, employers are realizing, well, we don’t want to raise wages to match what’s required by a stronger labor market. And so instead, they’re seeking to expand out to see young people who they can pay less and potentially exploit at lower wages,” Mast said.
Scripps National News
March 4, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, many are backed by state affiliates of industry groups like the National Restaurant Association, the Associated Builders and Contractors, Chambers of Commerce, and special interest groups like the Naples-based Foundation for Government Accountability, which has been a driving force behind child labor rollbacks across the country.
Orlando Weekly
March 1, 2024
At the federal level, data clearly show massive corporate tax avoidance – for example, in 2020, 55 of the largest corporations in the U.S. paid $0 in taxes. Information obtained by the Economic Policy Institute from seven states reveals that more than 60% of corporations operating in those seven states pay no state income tax. As it stands, we have no state-level data to know what is happening in Maine.
Portland Press Herald
March 1, 2024
Another piece of context that can be missing in immigration polling is the influx’s apparently positive impact on the economy. According to The Washington Post, an Economic Policy Institute analysis found that about 50% of the labor market’s strong recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024.
U.S. News & World Report
March 1, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 22 U.S. states increased their minimum wages on January 1 of this year, raising pay for an estimated 9.9 million workers. As such, operators are looking for ways to get the most out of their labor spend—and for many, that means turning to automation.
Restaurant Business Magazine
March 1, 2024
The bills come amid a national move to strip protections even as child labor violations increase, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In the first nine months of 2023, the Washington Post found that three-quarters of these violations came from the food service industry.
Indiana Capital Chronicle
March 1, 2024
As states pass bills that weaken established child labor protections, one unintended consequence could be setting up businesses to break federal law, says Terri Gerstein, the director of NYU Wagner Labor Initiative. “What they’re doing is misleading employers in their state, putting them on a path towards federal violations, in addition to really putting kids at risk,” she says.
On Monday, Gerstein released a report, in conjunction with the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-backed think tank, that encourages states to deter and address child labor violations and strengthen protections for child workers.
Governing Magazine
March 1, 2024
“This agreement…is a very, very big deal,” said Dave Kamper, Senior Strategist at the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute. “Starbucks Workers United has shown that determined workers, willing to use all the tools of worker power at their disposal…can bring companies to the bargaining table.”
In These Times
March 1, 2024