Large tech companies remain the biggest beneficiaries of the H1-B foreign worker visa program. Here’s why. [Paywall].
The Business Journals
July 14, 2023
According to Elise Gould, an economist at the Washington-based non-profit the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), workers on lower incomes generally take fewer vacations.
“Vacation time in this country is incredibly skewed towards people with higher incomes, so that it is much less likely that somebody who makes lower wages gets it,” she told Newsweek. “About 95 percent of the highest-wage workers actually do get paid vacation days and only 44 percent—less than half—of lower-wage workers get any paid vacation days.”
Newsweek
July 14, 2023
In Pennsylvania, Black workers have seen some of the largest gains in employment, with the Black unemployment rate falling by nearly 17 percent since the second quarter of 2020, an Economic Policy Institute analysis found.
The Washington Post
July 14, 2023
Others work because they can’t afford retirement. According to the Economic Policy Institute, roughly one-third of workers aged 55 to 64 don’t have access to a retirement savings plan. Those who rely solely on Social Security benefits may find they don’t cover all of their living expenses. Major unplanned expenses like medical bills can also keep people in the workforce.
Stateline
July 14, 2023
Indeed, a report from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, suggests that corporate profits contributed more to overall inflation in 2020 and 2021 than labor or material costs. Higher rental car prices and corporate profits may be part of this trend.
NerdWallet
July 14, 2023
It’s not just Iowa. At least fourteen states have sought to weaken regulations against the employment of children over the past two years, the Economic Policy Institute recently noted, even as violations of those laws have been on the rise. The Department of Labor (DOL) identified over 3,800 cases of child labor violations in the 2022 fiscal year after investigating some 835 businesses, the highest level of incidents since 2008. Among the violators were McDonald’s franchisees, slaughterhouse cleaning company Packers Sanitation Services, and a Hyundai and Kia plant in Alabama.
Quartz
July 14, 2023
Lots of low-wage workers just received a boost in pay, as more than a dozen states and localities increased their minimum wages.
Oregon beefed up its hourly minimum wage by 70 cents to $14.20 as of July 1, while Nevada increased its minimum wage by 75 cents to $11.25, according to a tally by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Washington, DC, raised its minimum wage by 90 cents to $17.
CNN
July 14, 2023
The U.S middle class, which once accounted for the majority of Americans, has been shrinking, while the salaries of top CEOs have increased by over 1,400% since the 1970s; in comparison, the average worker salary grew by just 18.1% in the same period, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Employee Benefit News
July 14, 2023
Even if all that won’t be enough to weaken overall economic growth, the shift in spending by many young adults could inject further uncertainty into an economy already beset by uncertainties, from whether the Fed will manage to tame inflation and halt its interest rate hikes to whether a recession is destined to strike by next year, as many economists still fear.
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute think tank, suggested that the likely hit to the economy might amount to perhaps one-third of a percentage point of gross domestic product — the nation’s total output of goods and services — or about $85 billion or $90 billion a year.
It’s “not trivial, but it’s not huge,’’ Bivens said. “At the macro level, my guess is that it won’t be a game-changer.’’
Associated Press
July 14, 2023
As the major U.S. corporations began offshoring their production or their suppliers in the 1980s and ’90s, only a relative handful of progressives—among them, Economic Policy Institute founder Jeff Faux, MIT economist Lester Thurow, and my Prospect colleague-to-be Bob Kuttner—argued that this would do long-term harm to the nation generally and its working class in particular.
American Prospect
July 14, 2023