The Economic Policy Institute reports the number of workers involved in major strikes increased by nearly 50% last year, and that doesn’t include smaller-scale work stoppages.
NBC Boston
July 21, 2023
Refers to EPI research on child labor.
The Nation
July 14, 2023
Cites EPI report on child labor.
CBS News
July 14, 2023
The federal government has vowed to crack down on violations of child labor laws, but the Economic Policy Institute, which examines the economic impact of government policies, reports that in the last two years, at least fourteen states have either passed or introduced measures to weaken the laws protecting children from dangerous working conditions.
They permit longer work hours and more dangerous work, lower the ages for work around alcohol, or introduce new subminimum wages for children.
Milwaukee Independent
July 14, 2023
Americans have long struggled to save enough for retirement, which remains a problem today. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average working household has just $95,776 saved for their golden years.
Motley Fool
July 14, 2023
Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute – a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank – reports that 14 states have introduced bills weakening child labor standards in the past two years and five state have passed them: Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and New Jersey.
“We’re seeing teens … hired into highly exploitative work that involves excessive hours, illegal exposure to either hazards or chemicals,” EPI’s Jennifer Sherer told NBC Nightly News last month.
The EPI-noted states have enacted laws extending the hours 14- and 15-year-olds can work. Bills have proposed paying young workers below a state’s minimum wage and allowing them to do more hazardous jobs.
The Journal Record (Oklahoma)
July 14, 2023
At the same time, corporate boards like Walmart’s are approving executive benefits that have grown exponentially in comparison to worker pay — in fact, the Economic Policy Institute released a report stating that CEO pay has increased by 1,460% since 1978, while worker pay has increased by just 18.1%.
CNN
July 14, 2023
The Rescue Plan also provided child tax credits to families. A 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute determined that those subsidies had helped to reduce the U.S. poverty rate to a historic low in 2021. Those credits expired at the end of that year, and an attempt to include the credits in the 2022 federal spending bill passed by Congress failed.
The American Independent
July 14, 2023
“Energy prices have definitely come down a lot in absolute terms over the past year,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens told Vox. “Grocery prices have fallen in absolute terms — i.e., not just slower inflation, actual price declines — since March.” Bivens cautioned that it’s not certain that these prices will keep dropping.
VOX
July 14, 2023
Long-term effects and inevitable unintended consequences of this approach may be less clear but Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, describes the combined impact as “transformational”.
“The investment in infrastructure will create a lot of jobs directly, a lot of economic dynamism and productivity and bring new technologies and efficiencies to infrastructure,” he says. “The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest investment in renewable energy and electric vehicles. People love it, people hate it. But this will be the US approach to meeting our Paris Agreement commitments.
“And historically, construction and manufacturing industries are highly interest rate sensitive, but they have not been sensitive to the last rate hikes because these policy supports are there, and the benefits are spreading out to other industries and jobs.”
Australian Financial Review
July 14, 2023