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
As for Trump’s claim that the transition to mostly EV sales will result in the loss of 100,000 jobs, a Trump spokesman did not respond to repeated queries asking for the source of this claim. We think Trump may be referring to a 2021 report by the Economic Policy Institute, which said that in the transition to EV sales, the auto industry could lose 75,000 jobs without sufficient government investment.
“In terms of setting up the U.S. auto sector to thrive in the EV transition, I’d argue that the IRA has absolutely done a lot to move us well away from the ‘base case’ scenario in 2021 that would’ve seen a large number of jobs lost,” said Josh Bivens, co-author of the report and chief economist at the institute. “The Biden administration is indeed on track to prevent those job losses.”
The Washington Post
February 2, 2024
A report released by the Economic Policy Institute found that between 2016-2019, 62% of corporations in Tennessee paid no taxes.
Tennessee Lookout
February 2, 2024
“Earned sick days are particularly important for low-wage workers who, absent sick leave, lack the savings, access to credit or assets needed to buffer against lost earnings if they need to take time off,” wrote Hilary Wething, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute who co-authored a report on state paid sick leave policies, in an email to New York Focus.
Chalkbeat
February 2, 2024
In 2021, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that the Trump regulation would have reduced worker compensation (transferring it to employers) by at least $3.3 billion annually.
Centre Daily Times
February 2, 2024
According to Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-union think tank which focuses on policy for lower-income workers, this lack of progress in the numbers seem at odds with the growing prominence of unions on the labor landscape.
It’s not a lack of support from the public that’s holding unions back from making more progress in growing their ranks. Even before the big wins of 2023, polling conducted in recent years showed rising union popularity, with support at its highest level since 1965, according to 2022 data from Gallup.
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“Even though there is this huge popularity of unions, a great deal of interest in them, and rising union activity, we still have just extremely weak labor law that makes it really, really easy for employers, or state lawmakers to really crush union organizing,” Shierholz said.
CNBC
February 2, 2024
The slow pace of unionization has helped drive rates down, as unionized workers are laid off or retire as part of the natural churn of the economy, Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, said in a commentary.
“As a result of the growing employer opposition to unions and the failure of policy to stem it, workers are unable to organize new union members fast enough under current labor law to keep pace with the natural ‘churning out’ of unionized jobs,” she wrote.
Investopedia
February 2, 2024
The decline of union power since the 1980s has coincided with stagnating wages in many sectors and a rise in economic inequality, now higher than it’s ever been since the Great Depression. Research by the progressive Economic Policy Institute shows union workers earn about 10.2% more in hourly wages, while nonunion workers benefit in highly unionized industries.
Minnesota Reformer
February 2, 2024
An analysis of the numbers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that unionization among workers of color, and young workers in particular, accounted for the small gains in the absolute number of workers represented by a union (up 191,000), with black workers having the highest unionization rate (13.1 percent). According to the EPI, losses in state and local government employment were a major blow for the public sector rate, as were the growing number of laws blocking public sector workers’ path to a union.
Jacobin
February 2, 2024
A 2013 study by the Economic Policy Institute reveals that if a college-educated worker becomes unemployed they are as likely as any other worker—of whatever level of education—to get trapped in long-term unemployment.
Time Magazine
February 2, 2024