A study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that the lowest income workers receive the most irregular schedules, with unpredictability leading to increased stress.
Buzzfeed
April 14, 2016
The Economic Policy Institute just released a report detailing how a nationwide investment in child care could increase women’s participation in the workforce and help diminish the gender wage gap. It’s no panacea, but on this Equal Pay Day, an achievable policy goal is something to celebrate.
Slate
April 13, 2016
Specifically, they’re making the case that more investment in child care could help shrink the pay gap—with the added bonus of growing the economy. According to an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute released earlier this month, access to affordable child care would help increase the participation of women in the labor force, thereby growing the economy by an estimated $210 billion each year.
Christian Science Monitor
April 13, 2016
It may be less expensive to send your kid to college than to day care, according to troubling new research. The Economic Policy Institute found in a recent study that Massachusetts ranks second in the nation for having the most expensive infant care. It also discovered that parents in the state pay $6,360, or 59.4 percent, more per year than what it costs for in-state tuition at a four-year public college.
Boston Magazine
April 13, 2016
So you did your research, filled out applications and survived the interview process. Congratulations! Your child is off to the best day care in town. (Yes, day care is now this involved. It certainly wasn’t like that when we were kids!) But with this accomplishment comes a seriously hefty price tag. The Economic Policy Institute recently released data about child care costs in the U.S. that found 33 states, plus Washington D.C., have day care facilities that charge more than college tuition for a four-year public school. That’s mind-blowing, especially for families with more than one kid.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
April 13, 2016
Childcare for infants in New Hampshire is the12th most expensive in the nation, according to a new report from a group calling for broad reform on childcare affordability across the country. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, the average cost for a year of infant care in New Hampshire is just under $12,000. Care for four-year-olds can average around $9,500.
New Hampshire Public Radio
April 13, 2016
Women make up half of the population—even if the pay gap were solely “our problem,” it would be a huge freaking problem. Or think about it this way: If women were paid fairly for their work, essentially half of the country would get a raise. “When we’re talking about unequal pay for women we’re talking about half the population,” Valerie Wilson, a director at the Economic Policy Institute, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “Certainly if you raise pay for half the population, that’s clearly going to have an impact on the American economy.”
The Huffington Post
April 13, 2016
Still, the pay bump may draw some heat from those who criticize astronomical pay for chief executives. The CEOs of the top 350 public-traded companies earn more than 300 times what average workers do, according to a study released last year by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Huffington Post
April 13, 2016
Think college is expensive? Try sending your kid to full-time day care or preschool. In nearly half the country, it’s now more expensive to educate a 4-year-old in preschool than an 18-year-old in college, a finding that illustrates the rising burden many families face affording care for children. The annual cost of care for a 4-year old at a full-time day-care center or school is greater than the average cost of in-state tuition at a four-year institution in 23 states, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. In Massachusetts, the state with the highest child-care costs, care for a preschooler is $12,781 annually or almost 20% more than an undergrad’s average tuition of $10,702. Care for a 4-year old is 73% more expensive than college in Florida, the state with the largest disparity. Florida has among the country’s lowest college tuition costs but average child-care costs of $7,668 a year. “High-quality child care is out of reach for many families,” said EPI research assistant Tanyell Cooke. “This crisis is not limited to low-income families, nor is it unique to certain parts of the country. It affects everyone, in every state.”
Wall Street Journal
April 12, 2016
The U.S. is the only nation in the developed world that doesn’t mandate maternity leave with pay. Childcare costs for families with two children exceeds that of rent in 500 of 618 metro areas in the country, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a resource group that advocates for workers.
Bloomberg
April 12, 2016
A recent study from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank created to give low-income a voice in policy, examined the costs of childcare versus college and found that the in-state public college tuition in 23 states was lower than the cost of full time childcare for a 4-year-old.
Time
April 12, 2016
Day care is expensive. In fact, educating your preschooler may be pricier than sending your teenager to college. “In nearly half the country, it’s now more expensive to educate a 4-year-old in preschool than an 18-year-old in college,” Eric Morath at the Wall Street Journal reports. The cost of child care outpaces the cost of a four-year college education in 23 states. The data comes from a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Business Insider
April 12, 2016
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute found that a national investment that caps families’ child care expenditures at 10 percent of their income could help more parents join and stay in the workforce, boosting national GDP by about $210 billion and putting $3.18 billion into the Missouri economy each year.
St. Louis Post Dispatch
April 12, 2016
Sure enough, some 17 percent of women over 65 live in poverty, compared with 12 percent of men, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
April 12, 2016
With just $90 billion a year, Congress could set up a national network of high-quality early-education programs open to all families, according to a recent analysis from economist Josh Bivens and his colleagues at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Their goal is to allow every family in the country to provide preschool and child care for infants and toddlers 4 and younger for no more than 10 percent of their incomes. The federal government would pick up the rest of the tab. The plan also calls for a staff of nurses to coach pregnant mothers and families with infants on child rearing. Bivens, it’s worth noting, says the plan would pay for itself over the long term, and that the government wouldn’t need a windfall from money squirreled away in the Caribbean to make it happen. “The kids who grow up 10 to 20 years from now would be more likely to earn higher wages and avoid contact with the criminal justice system,” he recently told Wonkblog.
The Washington Post
April 11, 2016
David Cooper and James Sherk talked about how increases in the minimum wage at state and local levels would affect local economies and businesses and the effect on workers’ standards of living or increasing unemployment.
C-SPAN
April 11, 2016
How much you make is a topic few people like to reveal. It’s considered impolite in many circles and it’s also fairly subjective, depending on your position and skill level, as well as gender, age and race, among other factors. “There’s a lot of arbitrariness and judgment that goes into what people are paid, and that’s to the disadvantage of women and minorities,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
April 11, 2016
A number of states and localities have been moving up minimum wages in the absence of an increase in the federal floor, which stands at $7.25. Last year, 11 states and the District of Columbia lifted their minimum wages through legislation, and 11 states increased them via regular indexing to inflation, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington DC think-tank.
A move in the federal minimum to $12 an hour would restore it to about its 1968 level relative to the earnings of a typical worker, said David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. That was the historical high point of the federal minimum wage. An increase to $15 would take the US beyond its previous experience with the national minimum, raising the wages of the bottom 40 per cent of workers.
Financial Times
April 11, 2016
This chart from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, illustrates the grim reality of wage stagnation in America (see below). “The stagnation has been very broad-based since around 2002,” says Larry Mishel, the president of the EPI. “And when I say broad-based, I mean the bottom 80 percent of the workforce, both college graduates and high school graduates, both white-collar workers and blue-collar workers. It’s not a phenomena solely due to the fact that we had a Great Recession, and I don’t want people to think that. This is very long-standing.” Economists disagree somewhat about technology’s effect on employment and wages, but there’s widespread agreement that globalization has indeed harmed middle-income American workers.
Pacific Standard
April 11, 2016
CEO pay used to be a big lightning rod, given how much more many top executives earn than the people they employ. The CEOs of America’s largest firms earn three times more than they did 20 years ago and at least 10 times more than 30 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Those are big gains even relative to other very high wage earners. But they are truly embarrassing increases compared to workers whose earnings have stalled for years.
Tampa Bay Times
April 11, 2016
As Richard Rothstein wrote last year for the Economic Policy Institute, “African Americans were prevented from moving to white neighborhoods by explicit policy of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which barred suburban subdivision developers from qualifying for federally subsidized construction loans unless the developers committed to exclude African Americans from the community.
CNN Money
April 11, 2016
There’s no clear-cut explanation for why single women are more liberal than their married counterparts, but Monique Morrissey, economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says it makes sense that since single women are more economically vulnerable, they also tend to want a stronger social safety net. Married women “become more complacent because they’re not as self-reliant,” says Morrissey.
Quartz
April 11, 2016
Critics of immigration argue, however, that the H1-B program is just a way for companies to force Americans to compete with foreigners and to drive down wages. They also see it as a program that helps support outsourcing, because companies bring in foreigners to train them here, and then ship the jobs back overseas. “There’s a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the tech industry,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute told the Wall Street Journal. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B program is to the business community.”
Fortune
April 11, 2016
“There’s a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the tech industry,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Daniel Costa told the Journal. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B program is to the business community.” http://on.wsj.com/1Xkkqjs
Politico
April 11, 2016
Sometimes states fail to allocate good teachers across school districts, with the result that poorer districts end up with the worst teachers. But unions aren’t to blame, according to a report out today from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “The misallocations are not more nor less severe or prevalent in states with stronger unions,” EPI’s Emma García and Larry Mishel write. Full report here: http://bit.ly/1XhQjZG
Politico
April 8, 2016
Critics say qualified U.S. workers are being displaced by cheaper foreign hires through the program. They highlight that many H-1Bs are issued to global outsourcing companies, particularly from India, that send workers to the U.S. to acquire skills and then move them back overseas, a practice that essentially promotes outsourcing of American jobs. “There’s a lot of evidence now that the program is used for cheap labor in the tech industry,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. “The fact that reforms have not been agreed upon in Congress, despite all the attention, shows just how important the H-1B program is to the business community.”
Wall Street Journal
April 8, 2016
Those on the right of the political spectrum aren’t the only ones flagging the drop in participation. Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which advocates for workers, has said the Fed should be patient in raising rates because wage growth remains too tepid, signaling there is still plenty of labor-market slack.
Bloomberg
April 8, 2016
An October study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that free riders represented 20.3 percent of bargaining units in RTW states, compared to only 6.8 percent in non-RTW states.
Baltimore Sun
April 8, 2016
It’s a leap that some business groups and others say could be dangerous for the economy. However, Ben-Ishai of CLASP argues that higher wages leads to higher employee retention as well as more spending money for employees— both outcomes that benefit businesses and the economy as a whole. For example, an Economic Policy Institute report found that increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 over the course of 3 years created a $10.4 billion increase in household consumption.
Washington Monthly
April 8, 2016
It’s more expensive in New Mexico to put an infant in day care for a year than to pay for a year of college at an in-state school, according to a new report on the rising costs of child care across the nation. The sobering statistic is hardly unique to New Mexico, but the study by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group for low- and middle-income workers, is refueling a New Mexico lawmaker’s push to boost the state’s investments in early education programs, even as state revenues are declining.
While the federal government recommends that families spend no more than 10 percent of their household income on child care, Lopez said, the Economic Policy Institute found that New Mexico parents are spending a far higher share of their earnings on child care. The institute found that child care spending in New Mexico—at an average of nearly $8,000 a year for the care of one infant and more than $7,000 for a preschooler’s care—is about 17 percent of the median income of just under $47,000 annually.
Santa Fe New Mexican
April 8, 2016