President Donald Trump has said some strikingly out-of-touch things about affordability: that it’s a “hoax,” he’s “solved it” and he’s “won affordability.” In his State of the Union address, he even said “prices are plummeting downward.” U.S. families know this is nonsense. But to see how much Trump’s policies will erode affordability in the coming years, you must understand that affordability isn’t just about prices.
Affordability is the outcome of a race between incomes and prices. And for typical families, the Trump agenda is near-guaranteed to harm their incomes far more than it can possibly reduce their prices.
MS NOW
March 2, 2026
Today, research shows that tipped workers are more likely to be people of color who face higher poverty rates. Black workers are especially overrepresented in lower-paying service jobs. The Economic Policy Institute reports that tipped workers are more likely to live in poverty than non-tipped workers, even if they work all year, and they are at greater risk of wage theft and unstable pay.
Federal labor data shows that wage gaps by race still exist among restaurant servers. Black women servers earn much less than white men in the same jobs, showing how race and gender affect tip-based work. States that allow the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 usually have higher poverty rates among tipped workers than states that require employers to pay the full minimum wage before tips.
The Root
March 2, 2026
The “no tax on tips” deduction is projected to provide an average benefit of $1,400 for eligible workers, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Money Magazine
March 2, 2026
Cites EPI productivity-pay gap.
Jacobin
March 2, 2026
As the Economic Policy Institute’s Nina Mast observes, “Most of these workers (about 80%) are employed in facility maintenance and operations…tasks that keep the institutions that imprison them running. Of the other roughly 20%, about 17% work for government-run businesses, where they might staff DMV call centers or wash laundry for public hospitals…. The other 3% work for private-sector employers, where they earn meager wages producing goods and services for industries across the U.S. economy.”
The Fulcrum
March 2, 2026
Research collected by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a leading nonpartisan think tank that studies the nation’s economic engine, found that the explosion of the U.S. labor force between 1994 and 2024 was possible primarily because of immigration. The same study released in April 2025 found that workers in their prime years (age 25 through 54) grew by 13.6 million people.
Spectrum News 1
March 2, 2026
Union activity has surged in the United States in recent years. In 2025, nearly half a million people who weren’t unionized, joined unions, bringing the total number of unionized people to 16.5 million. While this is not a large percentage of the population, according to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 50 million workers wanted to join a union but couldn’t. At a time of ongoing economic insecurity, there is a strong desire among workers to join forces and take on corporate employers.
Truthout
March 2, 2026
Public school teachers make about 27% less than other people who have similar levels of education in other jobs, according to 2024 data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute. That’s the highest on records that go back to the 1970s. It’s even worse for men, where the teacher pay gap is 36%.
CNN.com
March 2, 2026
Analysis: Yes, 2.4 million people are now unable to receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. However, this is not a sign of decreasing poverty but a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is cutting federal spending on certain welfare programs. Millions of people will lose eligibility for food stamps due to new work requirements. In fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the federal minimum wage officially fell below the poverty line in 2025.
Medill News Service
March 2, 2026
Compare that to any of the income figures noted above and the prospect of a diminishing middle class becomes easier to understand. Monthly costs are higher or lower depending on where you live in the country, as shown by the Economic Policy Institute’s family budget map.
Investopedia
March 2, 2026