Black people also suffer inequities in the labor market. For fifty years now, the unemployment rate of Black people has remained twice the rate of whites. In Washington, D.C., the city where John Thompson and I were born and raised, the jobless rate for Black people was more than six times the rate of whites in 2019. And Black households in 2019 earned just 61 cents on the dollar when compared to white households, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Progressive
February 22, 2021
As Insider reported last month, research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute suggests raising the minimum wage would increase income for nearly one in three Black workers. According to the institute, 23% of people who could see a boost in wages would be Black or Latinx women.
Teen Vogue
February 22, 2021
An organizing boom has hit the nonprofit world as workers at numerous legal aid groups, cultural institutions and advocacy organizations ranging from local social service providers to the American Civil Liberties…[paywall].
Law360
February 22, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute estimates raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 “would lift pay for nearly 32 million workers across the country.” According to an EPI study, 32 million workers — or 21% of the workforce — would see a raise if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour. The study also suggests that the increase “would provide an additional $107 billion in wages for the country’s lowest-paid workers,” the average of whom would see an additional $3,300 a year.
Media Matters for America
February 22, 2021
Did low-wage workers lose out in the first period and make gains in the second? Not at all. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, wages for the bottom 10th percentile of US workers rose in the late 1990s, and fell during the years from 2010 to 2014.
FAIR
February 22, 2021
We get some background on forced arbitration and why it matters from previous CounterSpin conversations with Celine McNicholas from the Economic Policy Institute and Joanne Doroshow from the Center for Justice and Democracy.
FAIR Counterspin
February 22, 2021
Over 70 percent of federal labor standards investigations of farms found violations, including wage theft and inadequate housing and transportation, according to a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute. However, although the agriculture sector accounts for a much higher share of investigations and violations than its share of total U.S. employment, there is a very low chance any farm employer will be investigated.
Currently, a hierarchy exists where legal immigrants suffer higher workplace violations than non-immigrants, but illegal immigrants suffer the highest rates of all, said Daniel Costa, director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s pretty clear that the lack of a legal status leads to the ability for employers to break the law against you without much worry of getting in trouble,” Costa said. “They fear retaliation and can’t speak up in the workplace because that could lead to their deportation and they’re afraid to report violations to government officials because they don’t want to interact with officials over deportation fears.”
Politico
February 22, 2021
Trump nominated three “employer-side” members to the NLRB, giving businesses a distinct majority on the five-member board, which currently has one vacant seat. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that Trump’s NLRB members sided with the pro-business Chamber of Commerce in 10 key issue areas, based on a 2017 “wishlist” published by the Chamber. The board also undercut unions’ ability to organize outside of business hours and allowed gig workers to be classified as independent contractors.
Center for Responsive Politics
February 22, 2021
Public Citizen and other groups are circulating a letter in support of DeFazio’s bill. The levy is “an important step toward having Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes,” says the letter, whose signatories so far include the liberal Economic Policy Institute and unions such as the AFL-CIO and International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Bloomberg
February 22, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist now with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, offers a much higher estimate of nearly 19 million unemployed, derived from the number of officially unemployed (10.1 million), those who dropped out of the labor force (5.3 million), and those who are misclassified or non-responsive to surveys (3.5 million). Add the people who have seen cuts to their income (6.8 million), and the total of those negatively affected economically by pandemic comes to 25.5 million.
The Fiscal Times
February 22, 2021