Elise Gould, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said that the coronavirus stimulus packages enacted by the government have helped create consumer demand that has carried the labor market through a storm of economic uncertainty.
The Washington Post
June 2, 2023
Union membership is half what it was in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not coincidentally, the decline in union membership tracks with the increase in income inequality, as this fact sheet from the Economic Policy Institute shows. The best news in the post-pandemic economy is that low-income workers have seen steady gains in both employment and wages, as the pandemic brought back classic Keynesian policies. President Joe Biden needs to be out celebrating that fact every day.
National Catholic Reporter
June 2, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute found that right-to-work states paid workers 3.2% less than states without those laws. Such workers also were less likely to have employer-sponsored health care and pension coverage.
“RTW laws have nothing to do with whether people can be forced to join a union or contribute to a political cause they do not support; that is already illegal,” EPI noted. “Nor do RTW laws have anything to do with the right to have a job or be provided employment. At their core, RTW laws seek to hamstring unions’ ability to help employees bargain with their employers for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.”
Iowa Starting Line
May 24, 2023
“Since the era of slavery, the dominant view of Black women has been that they should be workers, a view that contributed to their devaluation as mothers with caregiving needs at home,” wrote economics professor Nina Banks in a 2019 article for the Economic Policy Institute. “African American women’s unique labor market history and current occupational status reflects these beliefs and practices.”
Civil Eats
May 24, 2023
Epperson’s early experience was typical of many exhausted employees working long hours just to get by. According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, the lowest-earning quintile of Americans worked nearly 25 percent more hours in 2016 than they did in 1979. As wages have stagnated for low-income Americans, they’ve had to work more hours to make ends meet.
The Atlantic
May 24, 2023
In fact, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute highlights that income inequality has cost Social Security billions of dollars of revenue every year.
The Hill
May 24, 2023
The problem for Kroger and Albertsons: When you look at the available facts, all those who truly care about our local communities across New Mexico should be deeply concerned. Consider a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute that found the merger will lower wages for 746,000 grocery store workers in over 50 metropolitan areas of the U.S. Even worse, grocery workers could lose more than $300 million in wages each year if the proposed merger went through due to lack of competition. In total, this would result in lost wages for these essential workers and would negatively impact wages for all grocery workers — regardless of whether they are employed by Kroger or Albertsons.
Santa Fe New Mexican
May 24, 2023
Several months after Weber’s research, a study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that more than half of inflation since mid-2020 could be attributed to larger corporate profit margins.
Fortune
May 24, 2023
According to research from the Economic Policy Institute, approximately 217,000 minimum wage earners in Ohio are victims of wage theft each year, each missing out on an average of $2,800.
Cleveland.com
May 24, 2023