Notwithstanding those ups and downs, executive pay in Hollywood has followed the pattern of the rest of corporate America. As tracked by the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute, the estimated ratio between CEO pay and the wages of average workers in their companies soared from about 20-to-1 in 1965 to about 388-to-1 in 2021, the most recent year EPI analyzed.
LA Times
July 21, 2023
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
Like many older Americans, they keep working because they can’t afford to quit. An April report by the Economic Policy Institute summed it up like this:
“No Way Out: Older workers are increasingly trapped in crummy jobs and unable to retire.”
Labor economist and New School professor Teresa Ghilarducci, co-author of that report, told me that as housing and other living costs have risen in the post-pension era, it’s tougher for workers, let alone retirees, to pay their bills. And that financial fragility is far more prevalent among Black and Latino people.
LA Times
July 21, 2023
CEOs earned 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021, the Economic Policy Institute reported in October.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
July 21, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute published data that suggests these aberrations to employees’ scheduled times aren’t just inconvenient for workers, but that they may just lead to higher levels of burnout, stress, and at-home strife.
“Employees who work irregular shift times, in contrast with those with more standard, regular shift times, experience greater work-family conflict, and sometimes experience greater work stress,” the article states.
The Daily Dot
July 21, 2023
Public educators have long complained about stagnant wages. Adjusted for inflation, teachers’ average weekly pay has increased by only $29 between 1996 and 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The wage problem has contributed to a public-school teacher shortage in some parts of the country.
The Wall Street Journal
July 21, 2023
The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.
Huffpost
July 21, 2023
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
“A 2.2% real wage growth is just really good, excellent performance,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “If you do that for a number of years, you end up with much higher living standards.”
NBC News
July 14, 2023
According to a report from The Economic Policy Institute, for over 25 years, the average weekly wages of teachers have been relatively flat when adjusted for inflation. Since 1996, weekly pay for teachers has increased by only $29, while other college graduates’ salary has increased by $445 per week over that same time period.
CBS News Baltimore
July 14, 2023
Bill has also worked at the Economic Policy Institute and served as the executive director of the National Urban League’s Institute for Opportunity and Equality.
Legacy.com
July 14, 2023