When Bernal was hired for the curatorial position in August 2022, her hourly wage equaled just a bit more than $46,000 before taxes, barely squeaking past the Economic Policy Institute’s estimated livable wage for metro Denver at $45,554. “It’s kind of this open secret that people leave not because they don’t like their work, but because they simply are not paid enough to continue doing it,” she said.
Colorado Sun
February 2, 2024
“The H-1B program has many flaws that have become especially evident in
light of recent mass layo!s in the tech sector,” wrote researchers from the
Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank. “Instead of being used to fill
genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting
U.S. workers’ wages and working conditions, the latest data show that the H-1B’s biggest users are companies that have laid off tens of thousands of
workers in 2022 and the first quarter of 2023.
News & Observer
February 2, 2024
The teacher shortage isn’t just a Nevada problem, it is nationwide. Even Vermont is still looking for teachers. The Economic Policy Institute projects it will only get worse. They project the US will be roughly 200,000 public school teachers short by the 2025-26 school year.
Fox 5 Las Vegas
February 2, 2024
Last year, more than 60 million employees who wanted to join a union were unable to do so, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Fortune
February 2, 2024
“As an economist, I totally approve of the Biden admin’s decision to not tout stock market gains as evidence of their general approach to policymaking. As everybody says — and they’re right about this — the stock market isn’t the economy,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Hill
February 2, 2024
“As we continue on this road, you would expect job growth would slow because you’re getting closer and closer to full employment,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “The reserves of workers are getting smaller because more people have jobs.”
There were more job openings a few years ago because of the high turnover. Employers were constantly hiring because employees were frequently quitting and getting hired elsewhere, Gould said.
“There was just a lot more churn and that certainly slowed down pretty dramatically,” she said.
CNBC
February 2, 2024
State of play: The number of federal, state and local government employees covered by a union contract fell by 70,000 workers in 2023; it rose slightly — by 261,000 — for private sector employees, according to BLS data out last week.
- For the private sector, “it was a ‘swimming upstream’ situation,” says Heidi Shierholz, president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, “a resurgence of interest in unions that was so strong it was able to overcome how enormously stacked private sector labor law is against organizing.”
Axios
February 2, 2024
“Misclassification is a problem that affects many low-paid industries like construction, transportation, home health care,” Sally Dworak-Fisher, senior staff attorney at NELP, told CNBC. But “people in every occupation at all types of pay levels” can be vulnerable to it, Samantha Sanders, director of government affairs and advocacy at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNBC.
GO Banking Rates
February 2, 2024
“The level of job openings, hires, and quits are much closer to pre-pandemic labor market conditions than in the height of the Great Reshuffling of 2021-2022,” wrote Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in reaction to the data. “The faster churn at the height of the pandemic is behind us. The labor market is strong but not overheating.”
Quartz
February 2, 2024
Southern politicians tout the region’s “business-friendly” economic development policies, but a new study finds those policies are rooted in racism and have failed most people who live here.
The October study is from Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank focused on “the needs of low-and-middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.” The study looks at job growth, wages, poverty, and state GDP. The data, EPI said, “show a grim reality.”
The group characterized the Southern economic development model as one with “low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions.”
Memphis Flyer
February 2, 2024