Dollar figures are in 2022 dollars.Source: Economic Policy Institute analysis of Social Security Administration data
Bankrate
February 2, 2024
It is always a good sign when productivity is rising.
“When you think about what productivity is, it is the total amount of goods and services produced in our economy, divided by the total hours worked in the economy,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
Another way to think about it is the total amount of income the economy is generating per hour, she said.
“And when that goes up, that’s good for the economy,” she said. “That actually is what makes rising living standards over time possible.”
All sorts of different factors can contribute to productivity growth, she said. But “in general, over the long run, changes in productivity are really about changes in technology.”
Marketplace
February 2, 2024
According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, which analyzed the 2023 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), overall union membership went up even as overall union density went down. In other words, even though 191,000 more workers were represented by a union in 2023, the overall percentage of unionized workers dropped from 11.3% to 11.2%.
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So if there’s that much interest in unionizing, why haven’t the numbers gone up? What’s holding those 60 million people back? As the EPI explained, “Decades of policy decisions have made it harder for workers to form unions and bargain collectively.” Over the years, various Republican administrations and state politicians have managed to chip away at important labor rights by embracing anti-worker policies, implementing “right-to-work” laws aimed at weakening unions, creating barriers or outright bans on public-sector workers’ rights to organize, and exploiting loopholes to get around our already rickety federal labor laws and safety regulations. (And it must also be said that Democrats have by and large allowed them to get away with it.)
Fast Company
February 2, 2024
First, to your question about how many and what sort of workers will benefit from these minimum wage increases: An excellent resource for understanding the basic facts of who will benefit from these minimum wage increases is the Economic Policy Institute.
Truthout
February 2, 2024
More than 30% of employers who use forced arbitration include class action waivers in their arbitration agreements, according to a 2017 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
Fast Company
February 2, 2024
(According to a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, 61% of the lowest-wage workers do not have access to paid sick days.)
Time Magazine
February 2, 2024
Meanwhile, a typical Black employee is paid about 23% less per hour than a typical white worker, and a typical white family has eight times as much wealth as their Black counterparts, according to an August report from the Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
February 2, 2024
With the federal wage remaining so pitifully low and decades out of date (according to the Economic Policy Institute, its relative value is at a 66-year nadir), it’s no coincidence that, as the API’s proposal notes, “Many of these job openings are in the retail and food services industries” — i.e. jobs that pay minimum wage or potentially less, in the case of waitstaff.
Truthout
February 2, 2024
West Virginia AFL-CIO president Josh Sword says that the law has had a negative effect on local unions and will hurt workers’ long-term ability to organize and advocate for better benefits; research from left-leaning groups like the Economic Policy Institute have found that employee wages are lower in states with “right-to-work” laws.
Mountain State Spotlight
February 2, 2024
“We’re getting a lot of stories about a specific chunk” of the labor market, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. By and large, blue-collar jobs have been in good shape — it’s the white-collar, professional services jobs in areas such as finance and technology that have been struggling. “But that level of layoffs is actually a normal part of our labor market,” she said.
Shierholz also explained that layoffs and unemployment insurance claims have been lower than they were before the pandemic.
Bloomberg
February 2, 2024