Under the proposed rules, 27% of full-time salaried workers would get overtime, the Department of Labor estimated.3 As of 2019, 15% were eligible, down from 60% in 1975, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Investopedia
September 1, 2023
That brings us to the other side of the coin on workplace crime, wage theft. That’s been estimated as high as $50 billion a year by the Economic Policy Institute, which extrapolated from a 2008 survey of low-wage front-line workers in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
LA Times
September 1, 2023
Wage growth has been particularly strong for low-paid workers since March 2020, when the pandemic shut down the U.S. economy, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. Because of government stimulus such as expanded unemployment benefits, low-paid workers had a stronger safety net as they looked for better-paying jobs. As a result, many employers have boosted pay during the past three years.
Despite those gains, millions of workers are still struggling to pay the bills, with almost 4 in 10 Americans recently telling the U.S. Census that they were having difficulties meeting their household expenses. Although though pay increase are staying ahead of inflation this year, low- and middle-wage workers have generally not kept up with the cost of living over the prior four decades, according to EPI research.
“Low and middle-wage workers continue to struggle to make ends meet, even thought there have been some gains that we’d love to see continue for lower wage workers,” Gould told CBS MoneyWatch. “Many people have seen very little increase in the last five decades.”
CBS Moneywatch
September 1, 2023
Yet as corporate profits and CEO pay have skyrocketed in recent years, worker benefits have remained flat, or in some cases declined. From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay increased 1,460% while average worker pay rose by just 18%, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Yakima Herald
September 1, 2023
While the drop in job openings was significant, the reduction is due to little turnover, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at The Economic Policy Institute. The elevated amount of job openings observed in the past few years was not necessarily signaling an overheated job market, but rather a higher rate of “churn” as people quit and found new jobs at a faster rate, she said.
However, as that churn declines, so will the number of job openings.
“It’s not because things are necessarily contracting, it’s just normalizing somewhat,” she said of the labor market.
CNBC
September 1, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has estimated that about 15% of full-time salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay under the Trump-era policy. The new rule would almost double that to nearly 30%, according to Labor Department figures.
That’s still fewer than the more than 60% of salaried workers who were entitled to overtime pay in the 1970s, according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute. The overtime rule has only been sporadically updated over the past decades, with the Trump increase being the first since 2004. The Labor Department’s new rule attempts to change that pattern by adopting automatic increases to the salary threshold every three years.
“This is long overdue. It’s decades overdue, and it’s really important step,” said Economic Policy Institute Heidi Shierholz, who was the chief economist at the Labor Department when the Obama administration tried to enact its overtime rule.
Associated Press
September 1, 2023
However, Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, suggested that Tuesday’s numbers are still consistent with a good labor market for workers.
“Even as hires have softened, hiring remains above the quits rate in every sector,” Gould said in a statement. “The great reshuffling isn’t what it was two years ago, but it continues as workers look and find better job opportunities.”
The Hill
September 1, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reported last year that CEOs at the nation’s top 350 public firms made 399 times what the typical worker got in compensation, up from 366-to-1 the year before. The ratio was 59-1 in 1989, and just 20-1 in 1965.
Buffalo News
September 1, 2023
A number of studies have documented gig workers’ subminimum wages.
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Nearly a third of gig workers (29%) reported earning less than the minimum wage in their state, according to a June 2022 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
NerdWallet
September 1, 2023
New research from the Economic Policy Institute states that 30% of Indiana’s workforce work at jobs that pay less than the state’s living wage benchmark of $18/hour.
WRTV
September 1, 2023