Adjusting for inflation, autoworkers have seen their average wages fall 19.3% since 2008, according to Adam Hersh, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s because autoworker “concessions made following the 2008 auto industry crisis were never reinstated,” Hersh said in a recent blog post, “including a suspension of cost-of-living adjustments.”
CBS Moneywatch
September 15, 2023
The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned. In the U.S. from 1978 to 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute, economic productivity grew more than 60%. Yet the typical worker’s wages — which in previous decades had roughly tracked productivity — grew just 18%. The wages of the top 1% of earners, however, grew 385%. CEO pay grew by more than 1,000%.
MSNBC
September 15, 2023
From 2013 to 2022, profits for Big 3 automakers skyrocketed by 92 percent to the tune of $250 billion, according to number crunchers at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Another $32 billion in profits across the three companies is forecast for 2023. CEO pay increased by 40 percent over the last decade, and the three companies paid out nearly $66 billion in shareholder dividend payments and stock buybacks to investors.
EPI reports that concessions made by workers during the 2008 auto industry crisis and government bailout were never reinstated after companies such as General Motors and Chrysler (now Stellantis) got back on their feet. Wages at both union and nonunion automakers have fallen behind inflation as a result, with average real hourly earnings dropping 19 percent since 2008.
Truthout
September 15, 2023
Economic Policy Institute, which sources employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Local Area Unemployment Statistics and Current Population Survey, shows that in the second quarter of 2023 Florida’s Black unemployment rate was 3.6 per cent.
Pink News
September 15, 2023
Less than 1% of all U.S. farms are audited for labor law compliance each fiscal year, according to a 2023 Economic Policy Institute report co-authored by Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research. Even though this figure accounts for all U.S. farms — not just those who hire H-2A workers — more than half of investigations uncover H-2A violations.
“(The wage and hour division of the Department of Labor) is underfunded and understaffed,” Costa said. “Employers can pretty much do whatever they want, and there’s a very low likelihood they’ll ever be investigated.”
Investigate Midwest
September 15, 2023
Twenty states, including Utah, set their current minimum wage at or below the federal level, or have no state minimum wage.
The minimum wage is at its lowest value since 1956, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis from last summer.
KSL.com
September 15, 2023
Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the Big Three can afford to pay workers more. In a blog post Tuesday, Hersh noted that the Big Three saw combined profits of $250 billion between 2013 to 2022 and expect to bring in more than $32 billion in additional profits for 2023. Hersh said in the post that the Big Three is arguing that paying workers more would jeopardize their efforts in producing more electric vehicles.
“Despite all the company tricks, there is more than enough money for them to make EV investments, to pay their workers a fair share, and to maintain healthy profits,” Hersh wrote in the post.
CBS Moneywatch
September 15, 2023
Nationally, CEO pay has risen significantly in the last four decades. A 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, projected that a CEO at one of the top 350 companies in the U.S. was paid paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021 — a new record high from the last peak — a 372-to-1 ratio — in 2000.
According to the report, CEOs are getting paid more because so much of their pay is stock-related, widening the income gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%.
San Francisco Chronicle
September 15, 2023
The signers of the letter include high-profile liberal groups like the Center for American Progress, the Service Employees International Union, the Communication Workers of America, the Economic Policy Institute and the Quaker group Friends Committee on National Legislation, as well as newer groups like the Working Families Party, Groundwork Collaborative and the Economic Security Project.
Huffpost
September 15, 2023
While advocates say the program is crucial for small farmers facing staffing troubles, critics say it has enabled a powerful industry to suppress wages. Workers participating in the H-2A visa program are paid 55 percent of the average wage received by other nonsupervisory workers in the United States, according to an analysis published by the Economic Policy Institute.
Jacobin
September 15, 2023