“It’s almost like wartime change in the composition of demand,” Josh Bivens, chief economist of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me. “We tried to shove a bunch of that demand into sectors whose global supply chains were collapsing because of Covid.”
VOX
August 4, 2023
The potential work stoppage comes as the nation is seeing a significant uptick in strikes as well as organizing drives. Earlier this year, the Economic Policy Institute reported that major strike activity in the country was up by 50 percent last year.
Insider NJ
August 4, 2023
Experts contend the new laws will harm poor children, children of color and undocumented children who would take these jobs out of necessity to survive.
“They’re seeking to expand employment to workers that can be paid less in order to keep wages low and still maintain the same levels of employment,” said Nina Mast, a state economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute. “At the same time, you also have our broken immigration system that has resulted in many unaccompanied migrant youth in this country without work authorization and sort of compelled by their economic circumstances to work. And that’s really a recipe for exploitation because they lack sort of the legal rights and support to demand safe and age-appropriate work.”
The Hill
August 4, 2023
A study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that undocumented workers, like Moreno, are more likely to be victims of workplace abuses, and substandard health and safety procedures.
Connecticut Public Radio
August 4, 2023
“Sexual harassment of teens in the workplace is a huge and widespread problem that is rarely talked about,” says Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative at the Economic Policy Institute, which has cataloged recent child-labor bills. The debate over the Iowa bill, she says, “did serve as a wake-up call and a reminder that the safeguards we have in place, as it is, aren’t preventive, and that many teens and many adults who look back on their teen work have experienced harassment.”
Barron’s
August 4, 2023
A March report by the Economic Policy Institute said that 14 states have either introduced or passed bills that roll back child labour laws.
The Independent
August 2, 2023
In a similar vein, the plan calls for reinstating a Trump-era rule that made it easier to classify people as independent contractors who lack many of the protections enjoyed by employees. Berry labels this plan, which the Economic Policy Institute estimated would cost workers more than $3 billion per year, a part of “Making Family-Sustaining Work Accessible.”
Mother Jones
August 2, 2023
In a 2019 study, the Economic Policy Institute concluded that those concerns were real, and the tourist dollars that the services bring in are outweighed by the shrinking of the long-term rental market and the drop in tax hotel revenues.
Bloomberg
August 2, 2023
Mattel shut down its last U.S. factory — in Murray, Ky. — in 2001. Barbie, Hot Wheels and other Mattel toys are now made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Thailand. It’s a familiar narrative. The U.S. has lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs to offshoring since 1998, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and the impact has been particularly hard on workers of color.
San Francisco Chronicle
August 2, 2023