Valerie Wilson, an economist at the think tank Economic Policy Institute, told the Washington Post that Trump’s directives are turning “the mission of the EEOC on its head, in a way that weaponizes it against the people that it was intended to protect.”
SF Gate
July 13, 2026
Perhaps more strikingly, it found that median wages for 84.5% of all jobs in the Buckeye State pay less than the estimated cost of living for a family of three. In the Canton/Massillon area, annual cost of living is about $81,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.
Ohio Capital Journal
July 13, 2026
The minimum wage is going up in 17 states and localities July 1, but Nevada isn’t one of them.
With one or two exceptions, this summer’s minimum wage increases across the country are the result of statutes or ordinances by which the wage is adjusted each year for inflation, according to tracking by the Economic Policy Institute.
Nevada Current
July 13, 2026
“People’s purchasing power has diminished,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “That’s not only harmful to workers and their family’s ability to afford their basic necessities, but that means less demand for goods and services, which is what drives the economy.”
The Washington Post
July 13, 2026
So what’s driven the decline in work among teens?
“This is a decision of labor supply,” said economist Hilary Wething at the Economic Policy Institute. “Fewer teens are looking to participate in the workforce. For 18- and 19-year-olds, the share enrolled in high school or college grew from about 45% in 1984 to 63% in 2025. That’s a pretty big jump. They just have more competing priorities than previous generations: extracurriculars, college prep, academic programs, internships.”
Marketplace
July 13, 2026
A stronger, bolder federal minimum wage would restore a national wage floor that more effectively puts workers within reach of a living wage and eliminates unfair competition based on subpar wages. This means setting the federal minimum wage to two-thirds of the national median wage, which new research from the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute projects would reach about $20 an hour by 2030, raising pay for 40 million workers and their families.
The Hill
July 13, 2026
As his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sought to reduce the federal workforce, analysts such as Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute saw a rapid rise in the unemployment rate for Black workers, an increase only the pandemic and the Great Recession could surpass.
The exact number of Black employees who were among the 280,000 federal jobs lost was not immediately clear. It was hard to tell because agencies had stopped collecting employment data about race to comply with Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
But digging into the available statistics, Wilson noted that the large number of college-educated Black women losing their jobs would certainly be connected to government cuts. Nearly one-fifth of the federal workforce was Black, despite them being 13 percent of the population. And after President Harry S. Truman integrated the federal workforce in the 1940s, government jobs became a dependable pathway to the middle class for those who were Black and ambitious.
The Washington Post
July 13, 2026
The latest push from House Democrats urging the Department of Labor to withdraw its proposed rule revising the joint employer definition follows a familiar script.
Lawmakers, including Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), argue the proposal would narrow accountability in ways that could harm workers and small businesses, citing estimates that weaker standards could cost workers more than $1 billion annually, based on Economic Policy Institute analysis referenced in their letter to Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.
McKnight’s Senior Living
June 25, 2026
It’s rare for workers to allege child labor violations via litigation, said Nina Mast, policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Violations are most often addressed by state or federal agencies, which often struggle to adequately enforce even traditional child labor restrictions, much less those involving newer technologies, she said.
Given funding cuts and limited staff in the US Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, “I would be surprised if they had the resources or specialized training to deal with cases like this, since it is so new,” Mast said.
Bloomberg Tax
June 25, 2026
The report relies on analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
It projects that, if Wisconsin raised its minimum hourly wage to $20 by 2030, 458,800 Wisconsin workers would see higher wages, representing 16 percent of the state’s workforce. It also estimates that some 277,700 Wisconsin workers would be “indirectly affected” because, as people earning just above the minimum wage, the report argues that they would see raises as pay scales adjust upwards.
Wisconsin Public Radio
June 25, 2026