The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that, as of January 2023, 21 million workers still make less than $15 an hour. Workers in states that still adhere to the federal minimum wage are 46% more likely to make under $15 an hour, according to EPI, showcasing the power that the federal standard still holds.
Business Insider
May 5, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reports since 2009 the minimum wage has lost 27% of its purchasing power due to cost of living increases. The Institute adds, 23 states and Washington D.C. raised state minimum wage in 2023, including Sanders’ own Vermont. Starting January 1, 2023, Vermont raised its state minimum wage to $13.18 per hour. That is an increase of $0.63 from the previous minimum wage of $12.55.
Gray TV
May 5, 2023
A few weeks after Sanders’ hearing, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a study that found: “Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation.”
EPI’s chief economist Josh Bivens wrote that more than half of companies’ price increases since the start of the pandemic “can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8 percent of this increase,” adding: “This is not normal.”
The EPI analysis should have been definitive — but the corporate pundit class chose to ignore it.
The Lever
May 5, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Department of Labor and current head of the think tank Economic Policy Institute, said the labor market isn’t too hot.
“Wage growth is generally trending down,” Shierholz tweeted Friday.5 “We can absolutely sustain the kind of labor market tightness we are seeing today, if the Fed doesn’t stand in the way (or hasn’t already).”
Investopedia
May 5, 2023
Lawmakers across eight states — including Minnesota and Missouri — have bills in progress that weaken youth labor laws, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.
CBS News
May 5, 2023
Persistently high turnover rates also come with a significant financial cost for school districts. According to a report published in 2017 by the Economic Policy Institute, large urban districts spend approximately $20,000 on every new hire.
EdSurge
May 5, 2023
Sanders made the announcement outside the U.S. Capitol where he was flanked by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry, and Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz.
UPI
May 5, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said at the press conference that the economic impact of an increase to the federal minimum wage is one of the most-studied subjects in economics.
“The weight of that evidence shows that (when the) minimum wage increases, they raise the wages of our lowest wage-workers, they reduce inequality, they reduce poverty, they reduce child poverty, they reduce gender wage gaps, they reduce racial wage gaps because Black and brown workers, due to the broad impacts of structural racism on our labor markets, are disproportionately concentrated in the lowest-wage jobs,” Shierholz said.
New Jersey Monitor
May 5, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank, argues the H-1B program is exploitive and needs to be reformed because employers use it to trade highly paid US workers for lower paid foreign workers. The group said the top 30 H-1B employers hired about 34,000 H-1B workers in 2022 while laying off about 85,000 workers in 2022 and early 2023.
“Rather than turning to the H-1B program as a last resort when US workers cannot be found, most employers hire H-1B workers because they can be underpaid and are de facto indentured to the employer,” EPI said in a blog post recently. “This is evidenced by government data showing that technology companies continue to hire H-1B workers in large numbers while significantly reducing the sizes of their workforces.”
The Register
May 5, 2023