Since 2021, lawmakers in 14 states have introduced bills to weaken rules governing what kinds of workplace tasks minors are allowed to perform and for what wages. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has argued that this deregulatory attack is driven by corporations’ desire to ramp up exploitation.
“The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections,” EPI researchers Jennifer Sherer and Nina Mast wrote earlier this year. “And the recent uptick in state legislative activity is linked to longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country.”
Common Dreams
July 21, 2023
“It’s good news that women are finding jobs in this economy at a greater rate than they were previously,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute. She noted that brisk hiring in health care and government has helped more women find jobs.
States Newsroom
July 21, 2023
Given that people of color and immigrants will make up a majority of the working class by 2032, according to the Economic Policy Institute, one might ask if they are not strategic in their own right. The organizing efforts of immigrant farmworkers, janitors, construction workers, and others are responsible for most of the actual growth of unions in states like California over the past three decades.
The Nation
July 21, 2023
Despite recent fluctuations in the job market, a gloomy economic situation, and the rising cost of living, 2023 is a great time to be in the graduating business school class.
That’s according to the Economic Policy Institute, which recently published a report suggesting this year’s graduating class is in better shape than the class of 2022, with a stronger labor market for younger workers, and lower unemployment and underemployment rates.
BusinessBecause
July 21, 2023
The math on teacher pay may not add up for college students. Teachers are generally paid less than their college-educated peers, a trend that has worsened over the last several decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Public school teachers now earn about 24% less than other college-educated professionals, the biggest gap since 1979, the a left-leaning think tank noted.
CBS Moneywatch
July 21, 2023
Employers struggled to attract and retain warehouse workers early in the pandemic, which caused a shift in spending from services to goods, said Monique Morrissey, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Non-college-educated workers had found new leverage by quitting and moving to better-paying or easier jobs, forcing Amazon and its competitors to respond with sign-on bonuses and wage increases. White saw ads from Walmart and Target last year advertising warehouse jobs that started in the $20 to $24 range.
“No doubt Amazon had to prominently advertise an increase in pay in response to negative reports about the company’s poor working conditions and low wages,” said Morrissey.
Labor Notes
July 21, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the typical CEO of the 1960s made 20 times what one of his average employees did. In 2022, according to an AFL-CIO report, the ratio climbed to 324-1. That’s not inflation — that’s “greed-flation.”
LA Times
July 21, 2023
Regulators have so far been unwilling to fight powerful tech giants over worker classification, said Celine McNicholas, counsel at the Economic Policy Institute. She said gig companies should already be treating their drivers as employees, but have “decided they are unwilling to comply with the law.”
“That is the business model that they have employed out of the gate, and they have gotten away with it,” she added. “There hasn’t been federal enforcement. Where is the DOL lawsuit against these companies? That is how change is made in big companies that are skirting regulations or violating the law.”
Bloomberg Law
July 21, 2023
By breaking down the price increases into their three main components — labor cost, nonlabor inputs and profit markup — the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provides much better evidence for how inflation came about during the pandemic. The EPI study looks at these three components from 2007 to 2019 and from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021 across Non-Financial Sector industries (NFC), which form 75% of the entire private sector. The study shows that from the second quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, overall prices in the NFC sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%. It shows an acceleration of over 1.8% price growth compared with the 2007-2019 pre-pandemic business cycle.
Ventura County Star
July 21, 2023
In 2021, the top 10% of Americans held nearly 70% of US wealth, up from about 61% at the end of 1989, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The top 1% of earners in the United States now takes home 21% of all the income in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
That means a top-ranked university can charge whatever it wants and will still find wealthy families willing and able to pay each year.
CNN Business
July 21, 2023