The number of kids employed in direct violation of existing child labor laws, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute this past March reported, has soared 283 percent since 2015 — and 37 percent in just the last year alone. Last week brought the alarming news that three Kentucky-based McDonald’s franchises had kids as young as 10 working at 62 stores in four different states. Some of these under-working age children were working as late as 2 a.m.
Inequality.org
May 12, 2023
Lauding the book, Alan Tonelson, a fellow of the Economic Policy Institute at the time, wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “In a political climate where the labeling of all dissenting foreign policy voices as ‘isolationist’ is praised in the news media as responsible leadership, Mr. Steel’s essay is a rare example of clarity, wisdom and intellectual integrity.”
New York Times
May 12, 2023
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute has released a study arguing that wealth for the top 1 percent has grown by double digits while falling for the remaining 99 percent.
Providence Magazine
May 12, 2023
Program critics are urging U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to look deeper at H-1B petitions coming from tech companies, “some of which are laying off tens of thousands of workers,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute.
TechTarget
May 12, 2023
Some economists also remain skeptical of the researchers’ findings that St. Paul’s minimum wage increases, which didn’t start taking effect until 2020, led to job losses in 2018 and 2019 as employers anticipated the coming changes. Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute called that finding “completely implausible.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune
May 12, 2023
“I’d definitely say 2011 was a step forward in how aggressively the debt ceiling was weaponized to secure partisan policy goals,” Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told Vox. “I’d say 1995 was also important; [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich threatened this but didn’t take it as far as the GOP did in 2011.”
VOX
May 12, 2023
With passage, Ohio would join a small train of states rolling back child labor laws. Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Jersey enacted such policies in 2022 and 2023. Another six states have considered but not yet passed them, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The EPI, a progressive think-tank, called the state attempts part of a “coordinated campaign backed by industry groups intent on eventually diluting federal standards that cover the whole country.”
Cleveland.com
May 12, 2023
However, there are reasons to believe Hoyt’s model may show a real trend. The topsy-turvy pandemic era job market has helped out the lowest-paid workers quite a bit: Between 2019 and 2022, wages for the bottom 10% of workers grew 9% after adjusting for inflation, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, found.
Investopedia
May 12, 2023
After outlining the impacts of a default—including cuts to Inflation Reduction Act climate provisions that “would be literally catastrophic”—Economic Policy Institute experts Josh Bivens and Samantha Sanders also asserted Tuesday that “all of this clearly calls for abolishing the debt limit to keep irresponsible congressional majorities from holding the nation’s economy hostage to its policy preferences in the future.”
Common Dreams
May 12, 2023