As publicly traded companies confess the ratio between the pay of their CEOs and their median worker, a left-leaning policy research firm is offering a look at how the other half — or the other 99 percent if you are really riled up about income inequality — scrapes by. The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute’s family budget calculator looks at 10 different family profiles, comparing median family income with the cost of living based on the metro region or county. The database covers all 3,142 U.S. counties and 611 metro areas. It should be no surprise that the exercise leads the EPI to conclude that nowhere in the country do minimum wage workers — even those in places where the minimum wage exceeds the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — earn enough to meet the requirements of a family budget. That’s the case whether the family is an adult with no children or two spouses with up to four children. (whole story)
Pittsburgh Post Gazette | March 20, 2018
Let’s talk numbers. The Economic Policy Institute found that a single adult living in the Indianapolis-Carmel metro area spends, on average, about $250 per month on groceries. If that same adult moved to a more expensive borough such as Manhattan in New York City, their monthly food cost would be around $300. At first glance, these numbers do not seem so high. However, the EPI based food costs off of the United States Department of Agriculture’s low-cost plan, which assumes the individual would primarily buy and prepare his or her own food. So, if someone plans to eat out more or buy prepared foods, then the cost of food can greatly increase.
Indiana Daily Student | March 20, 2018
The New Jersey strike is just the latest action by public school teachers following the West Virginia work stoppage to improve school funding and pay. Educators in Oklahoma and Arizona have threatened similar actions if improvements on those issues aren’t made in their states. The West Virginia strike’s influence seems apparent. It reminded workers, especially public sector workers, “who have been living on the whims of state legislatures,” of the power they have to improve wages and working conditions, Celine McNicholas with the Economic Policy Institute said. McNicholas is the director of labor law and policy at EPI, a progressive think tank.
Bloomberg BNA | March 20, 2018
The average wealth for a white family is $678,737, according to the Economic Policy Institute; for a Black family, it’s $95,261. That’s a nearly $600,000 difference between the two races. This deep divide is also present when looking at median wealth: $134,230 for a white family, $11,030 for a Black family, EPI reported.
Romper | March 20, 2018
“The ruling is bad for investors because it means investors will get conflicted advice,” says Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank. “It means that retirement investors are at risk of having their advisers legally steer them into investments that are not good for them.” Without the “fiduciary rule” in place, she adds, it means “the law does not protect them, so they will have to protect themselves.”Opponents of the rule argue that it was overly burdensome and, as a result, that it would end up resulting in higher, not lower, costs for investment advice. Investors who act on advice of financial professionals not working in their best interests will lose an estimated $1.9 billion a month, or roughly $23 billion a years, Shierholz says, citing the ECI’s latest analysis.
USA Today | March 19, 2018
In response to the ruling, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said in a statement: “This common-sense rule has survived repeated court challenges, but special interests with deep pockets can persevere until they get the result they want. All this proves is how much conflicted advice contributes to Wall Street profits at the expense of retirement savers.”
Common Dreams | March 19, 2018
Milich’s concern is well-founded. Per a 2016 Economic Policy Institute study, teachers are paid 23 percent less than other college graduates. One-time National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb responded to the EPI’s findings in a conversation with A Plus. “We should want the most talented, dynamic, dedicated professionals possible to entrust with our country’s future,” he said in 2016. “With this kind of salary deficit, the profession doesn’t get even ground to compete on its own merits.” (chart included)
A Plus | March 19, 2018
Larry Mishel, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, calculated the growth of teacher wages compared to wages overall in the state. “Teacher salaries grew by just 3.8 percent while the average job’s compensation grew 23.6 percent (between 1990 and 2015-16), Mishel said, calling the lack of growth “dramatic.” “Oklahoma doesn’t have the lowest per capita income among its neighbors (New Mexico and Arkansas are far lower), but it has, by far, the lowest teacher salaries,” he said. (Larry quoted throughout)
Tulsa World | March 19, 2018
In the Economic Policy Institute’s report entitled “Unfulfilled Promises,” EPI economist Ben Zipperer and economic analyst Janelle Jones concluded that on average, “Amazon’s fulfillment centers are ineffective at providing net job growth.” “When Amazon opens a new fulfillment center, the host county gains roughly 30 percent more warehousing and storage jobs but no new net jobs overall, as the jobs created in warehousing and storage are likely offset by job losses in other industries,” the report states. Zipperer told The Bee that while Amazon certainly generates job growth within the warehousing industry sector when it opens one of its massive order-filling centers in a community, it does not appear to translate into employment gains across the entire local economy. “It seems to be shifting the composition of employment in some places,” Zipperer said. “You do see more warehousing workers. They are definitely hiring.” (whole story)
The Fresno Bee | March 19, 2018
Si el cheque no te alcanza para fin de mes, no eres el único. Si crees que es caro vivir en el condado de Los Ángeles, estas en lo correcto. La última calculadora de presupuesto familiar del Economic Policy Institute (EPI) muestra que una familia de dos adultos y dos niños en el condado necesita ganar 7,691 dólares al mes, o 92,295 dólares al año, para cubrir todos sus gastos. Eso supera el ingreso familiar promedio del condado de Los Ángeles de 66,203 dólares por año, según la Encuesta de la Comunidad Americana de la Oficina del Censo de Estados Unidos. (whole story)
La Opinion | March 19, 2018
Albright tries to get by on $31,000 a year. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank created to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions, a mother of two children like Albright would have to make $61,725 a year to have an adequate standard of living in Somerset County. For an adult with no children, that figure is $33,522. The Institute’s Family Budget Calculator takes into account geographic differences in cost of living and factors in a range of expenses, including housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and other basic necessities.
Daily American | March 19, 2018
The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., looked at data on the cost of living for 10 family types in all 3,142 counties and 611 metro areas to determine where areas fall in terms of affordability. Greater Baltimore was found to have the 35th highest cost of living, and 15th highest median family income. Of course, that’s under EPI’s standards, which measures only what’s required for families to have an adequate standard of living and does not include extra expenses such as paying off student loans or saving for college or retirement. Using the data they collected, EPI created its “Family Budget Caculator,” which allows the user to compare the monthly and annual cost of living for families of various sizes. It also shows how much those famililes spends on housing, food, child care, transportation, health care, taxes and other necessities. (whole story)
Baltimore Business Journal | March 19, 2018
A recently released study questions whether workers hired through temp-for-hire and staffing agencies is shrinking that premium. According to the study by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, since 1990 real wages for production workers have risen by only 0.1 percent annually. The research points to government data that estimates there are about 1.2 million temporary workers in manufacturing. And nearly one-third of all manufacturing production workers rely on food stamps or other government help “to make ends meet,” the paper says.
Dayton Daily News | March 19, 2018
“Kudlow is obviously coming in knowing there is a president who will make very sudden moves on things like tariff policies,” said Heidi Shierholz, the Economic Policy Institute’s senior economist, and a former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama. “So he knows what he’s walking into.”
PBS News Hour | March 16, 2018
The cost of raising a family looks very different depending on where you are. It will cost you about $58,906 a year to raise a four-person family in Brownsville, Texas, for example, but if you move to San Francisco, California, that expense more that doubles, to $148,439. That’s according to the Economic Policy Institute’s newly updated family budget calculator. The calculator shows the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living across the U.S. In other words, it measures “what families need to get by,” says EPI Senior Economist Elise Gould. (whole story)
CNBC | March 16, 2018
Did you know that a family of two adults and two children living in L.A. County needs to earn $7,691 a month, or just over $92K a year to meet all of its living expenses? Elise Gould is a Senior Economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “When you look at what it really costs to get by in Southern California, it takes a lot of money.” The Family Budget Calculator breaks the $92k down this way: A family of four will pay $1,663 a month for housing, $830 for food, $1,223 for child care, $1,159 for transportation, $795 for health care, $1,006 for other necessities and $1,016 for taxes. That’s a lot more than L.A. County’s median family income, which is just $66,203 per year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. (whole story)
KABC | March 16, 2018
Deeply disturbing is the reality that 50 years later, Black people still suffer the brunt of systemic racism and inequality. When we look at data provided by the Kerner Commission report and compare it to today’s reality, it is shocking how far we haven’t come. In a must-read follow-up briefing by the Economic Policy Institute titled 50 years after the Kerner Commission, researchers Valerie Wilson, Janelle Jones (who appeared on WURD to discuss it) and John Schmitt observed that: (key findings listed)
Philadelphia Citizen | March 16, 2018
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “The substantial progress in educational attainment of African Americans has been accompanied by significant absolute improvement in wages, incomes, wealth, and health since 1968. But black workers still make only 82.5 cents on every dollar earned by white workers, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, and the median white family has almost 10 times as much wealth as the median black family.” When it comes to home ownership — a well proven method of attaining and passing down generational wealth — the news is even more dire. With EPI also finding that in terms of family wealth, “One of the most important forms of wealth for working and middle-class families is home equity. Yet, the share of black households that owned their own home remained virtually unchanged between 1968 (41.1 percent) and today (41.2 percent). Over the same period, homeownership for white households increased 5.2 percentage points to 71.1 percent, about 30 percentage points higher than the ownership rate for black households.”
Atlanta Black Star | March 16, 2018
Wages have increased relative to where they were during the Great Recession, but the gaps between rich and poor, and between black and white, have widened. To put that into context, wage gains since the financial crisis indicate that most workers are merely catching up, not getting ahead, according to a report released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Bankrate | March 16, 2018
Aside from debt, the other primary culprit Americans say keeping them from saving is stagnant income. “A big reason why so few Americans save for an adequate retirement is too-low pay,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, pointing out that median wages for most workers have barely budged. “Those are totally linked.” … “I worry about 2019 — lots of people not getting refunds or even owing money. I think that is a potential problem,” Bivens said, and a Bankrate survey from last year illustrates why this could be a problem: Nearly one-third of respondents — a record high — said they would spend their refund on necessities like gas and groceries. “I’m a little worried that the IRS is being encouraged to be really aggressive… to make the tax cuts seem really impactful for political reasons,” Bivens said.
NBC News | March 15, 2018
The Economic Roundtable, whose “mission is to conduct research and implement programs that contribute to the sustainability of individuals and communities,” was blasted by Disney executives. Disney said the research “is inaccurate because it was answered by only a limited number of union workers. The company also said that the average hourly resort worker earns $37,000 a year, which works out to nearly $18 per hour.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, the cost of living for a family of four in Orange County, California, where Disneyland is located is over $100,000; for the areas surrounding Walt Disney World in Florida, a family of four needs more than $75,000 a year to live.
Nonprofit Quarterly | March 15, 2018
No doubt this comes as little surprise, but it really does cost a lot to live in the Bradenton-Sarasota area. How much, you might ask? A family of four spends almost $80,000 per year to live in the Manatee-Sarasota statistical area, according to the Family Budget Calculator released by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive Washington-based think tank. At $79,230 per year, that makes the two-county area one of the least-affordable regions in Florida. (whole story)
The Bradenton Herald | March 15, 2018
Late last year, “The Washington Post” wrote that African Americans were the only group that showed no economic improvement since 2000. They based their conclusions on Census data. This year, there was even more sobering news in a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The new study issued found “no progress” for African Americans on homeownership, unemployment and incarceration in 50 years. Much of what was included in the EPI study was stunning data on African American economic progress. Fifty years after the famous and controversial Kerner Commission Report that identified “white racism” as the driver of “pervasive discrimination in employment and education” for African Americans, EPI concluded that not much has changed. The EPI study stated the obvious and pointed to glaring statistics.
NNPA Newswire | March 15, 2018
Further, as reported by Smithsonian.com, the Economic Policy Institute, which released its own study on the 50th anniversary of Kerner Commission’s findings, reported that in 2017 black unemployment was higher than it was in 1968, and it remained around twice the rate of white unemployment.
The Washington Informer | March 15, 2018
The Hill | March 14, 2018
About 60 million people—more than half of the non-union private sector workforce—are covered by mandatory arbitration agreements, according to an Economic Policy Institute study. These agreements require employees to resolve disputes through private arbitrators chosen by employers, rather than go through the courts.
Fast Company | March 14, 2018
About 60.1 million workers in the U.S. are beholden to mandatory arbitration clauses, according to a study released last year by the progressive Economic Policy Institute. Many of them have no idea; you can agree to give up your right to file a lawsuit simply by accepting an employee handbook. Employees win in arbitration only 21 percent of the time, according to an earlier paper from EPI ― a much lower rate than you’d find in state or federal court. And if they win, monetary damages are far lower as well ― less than half of what a victim would be awarded in court. If a victim loses, many companies will require her to pay arbitration fees.
The Huffington Post | March 14, 2018
It has been 50 years since the historic Kerner Commission found that discrimination against African-Americans had created barriers to their ability to be successful in civic life. The commission, formally known as the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, was established after America’s 1967 race riots. Researchers from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) have analyzed some of the same measurements of success in a new report, to discover whether – and to what extent – the same barriers exist. … The EPI analysis found that African-American workers continue to earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by white workers, and said virtually no progress has been made in the rate of home ownership.
Public News Service | March 14, 2018
The Economic Policy Institute notes that without homeownership, among other things, black wealth has suffered. The median wealth of a black family is $17,409, compared to $171,000 for a white family—nearly 10 times as much. Because homeownership has been so central to America’s post-war economy, those shut out of it tend to be left behind.
Curbed | March 14, 2018
A new Economic Policy Institute study by Jeffrey Keefe, a Rutgers University professor emeritus, finds that Pennsylvania’s public school teachers earn 6.8 percent less, even after accounting for pension benefits, than similarly educated and skilled workers in the state. Looking to the future, Keefe finds that recent cuts in pension benefits for new teachers enacted in June will boost the pay penalty that new teachers face to 10 percent.
The Times-Tribune | March 14, 2018