The minimum wage legislation that Democrats including Sanders and Brown introduced last week would gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025. Starting in 2026, it would index the federal minimum wage to median wage growth. Supporters of the measure say an independent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute indicates their proposal would increase wages for nearly 32 million Americans, including roughly a third of all Black workers and a quarter of all Latino workers.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
February 1, 2021
That higher number may be what’s called for, Josh Bivens, director of research at nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, argues: “I see nothing that makes me think, ‘Yeah, we should go smaller, we’re almost there, we’ve got this covered.’ We don’t have this covered—we really need to go big to getting a full return to economic health,” he said on a press call Monday.
Fortune
February 1, 2021
At a campaign rally last October in Flint, Mich., a long-depressed auto manufacturing city, Biden extolled unions as the backbone of the middle class and noted that the first group that endorsed him when he ran for the Senate in the early 1970s was the United Autoworkers.
“It’s more in his DNA,” said Thea Lee, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute. “I’ve seen him over the years at labor events, and he’s very comfortable.”
Biden appointed two of the think tank’s alumni — economists Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey — to serve on the White House Council of Economic Advisors.
LA Times
February 1, 2021
Specifically, the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act will:
- Invest $100 billion in grants and $30 billion in bond authority targeted at public schools with high need and facilities that pose health and safety risks to students and staff
- Create over 2 million jobs based on an Economic Policy Institute analysis that each $1 billion spent on construction creates 17,785 jobs
Senator Brown's office
February 1, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., since the onset of the COVID-19 shock to the economy, about 6.2 million workers have lost access to health insurance they previously had with their employers.
North Bay Business Journal
February 1, 2021
Needless to say after months of the pandemic, U.S. manufacturers can use a lift. Although manufacturing jobs had risen steadily between 2010 and 2019, the coronavirus wiped out half of the jobs that were gained during that period, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank offered a broader picture that’s even more bleak: Compared with 1997, there are 5 million fewer manufacturing jobs and 91,000 fewer plants today due to offshoring, automation and other factors. Rebuilding and expanding U.S. manufacturing has no downsides for Americans.
Las Vegas Sun
February 1, 2021
Such an increase would boost wages for more than 32 million US workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Agence France Press (AFP)
February 1, 2021
Roughly half of those working in some parts of Houston and San Antonio—the vast majority of whom are workers of color and women—would be affected by the plan, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor group that used federal data to analyze the impact of the proposal.
San Antonio Express-News
February 1, 2021
If that sounds like hyperbole, consider that the median personal income in the U.S. was roughly $36,000 in 2019, according to the Census Bureau’s latest numbers. Meanwhile, a single adult needs $34,000 to cover the basics in the most affordable places, such as Lamar County, Alabama, according to a living wage calculator compiled by Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. The wage realistically required to get by is nearly three times the federal poverty level, a benchmark that is absurdly low and skews our notions of hardship.
Bloomberg
February 1, 2021
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, most retirement funds in the US were already underfunded before the pandemic started. Nearly half of Americans between the ages of 32 and 61 do not have any retirement savings and most of those that do have savings under $21,000, according to a 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
February 1, 2021