Based on an analysis of 2022 staffing levels, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that the Department of Labor had an insufficient number of investigators to cover the growing H-2A visa program, much less the rest of the agricultural world. With the number of investigative staff declining by more than 70 employees so far in 2023, the agency has that much less manpower to oversee the program, as well as investigate violations in other industries.
Politico Pro
October 20, 2023
That comes even as real wages are growing faster for lower-income Americans than those with higher incomes. Workers in the bottom 10% of the income distribution saw real wages grow 9% between 2019 and 2022, a March report by the Economic Policy Institute found.
Business Insider
October 20, 2023
The 2-to-1 unemployment disparity is “one of the most durable and defining features of the U.S. labor market,” economists Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute and William Darity of Duke University wrote in a March 2022 paper on inequality in employment. It endures through good economic times and bad, they found, and is relatively constant across age, gender, region and education level.
AARP
October 20, 2023
A new study shows that farmworkers make substantially less than non-farmworkers, highlighting a wage rate gap that has remained virtually unchanged from the previous two years.
Daniel Costa with the Economic Policy Institute spoke with RFD-TV’s own Suzanne Alexander on average earnings, what trends he is seeing, and how the USDA is tackling the subject.
RFD-TV
October 20, 2023
All in all, the true cost of wage theft amounts to something substantially north of chump change: A 2014 study from the Economic Policy Institute “a nationwide epidemic that costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year.”*
New Republic
October 20, 2023
Back in 1965, the Economic Policy Institute detailed last month, chief execs at America’s major corporations took home 21 times as much as America’s most typical workers. CEOs last year averaged 344 times typical worker pay.
Inequality.org
October 20, 2023
Property crimes accounted for roughly $30 billion in economic losses in 2019; in contrast, a 2014 estimate by the Economic Policy Institute found that wage theft cost workers nearly $50 billion every year.
The Appeal
October 20, 2023
UAW members’ pay has decreased by 19.3% since 2008, in contrast to the 40% wage increase the “Big Three” CEOs have experienced in the same time period, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. To combat this, the UAW is demanding a 46% wage increase, a four-day work week, and overtime pay beyond 32 hours.
Spartan Newsroom
October 20, 2023
Although overall CEO compensation fell 14.8% in 2022 because of a stock market decline, CEO pay soared 1,209.2% from 1978 to 2022 versus typical workers’ pay, which rose 15.3% during the same period, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis released in September. The progressive think tank makes the case that the increase in CEO pay is not harmless to the average worker and states that workers in the bottom 90% would have 25% higher wages today if not for the vast differences in wage increases from the 1970s to 2021.
Fain has also emphasized auto manufacturers’ profits as another reason the companies should be able to afford higher wages for UAW members. Although all of the big three automakers suffered losses in annual gross profit from 2019 to 2020, in the long run, the companies’ profits have shot up in the past decade while autoworkers’ wages have fallen. From 2013 to 2022, profit at Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors rose 92%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
From 2008 to 2023, average hourly earnings for people working in auto manufacturing sank 19.3% and wages for workers responsible for both auto manufacturing and vehicle parts fell 10%, the EPI analysis showed.
Michigan Advance
October 20, 2023
A previous study by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute on wage inequality published in 2022 showed that the top 10% of earners — including both men and women — are the only group to have seen their income share grow since 1979.
Business Insider
October 20, 2023