Citation: Bivens, J and L Mishel (2015), “Understanding the Historic Divergence between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay: Why It Matters and Why It’s Real,” Economic Policy Institute
Vox EU
February 16, 2022
How to read jobs reports. I’ve
talked about previous reports with Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, including what we do and do not learn from these reports.
She said they need to be viewed as pieces of information, not the full picture, in part because the surveys can overstate things and miss the changing composition of the workforce.
Still, it’s best to know the latest information, even if we know it’s likely to change, she said.
CNN
February 11, 2022
As a policy matter, states and cities should think about requirements that would make public-facing jobs safer so older people feel comfortable returning to them, at least part time, said Monique Morrisey, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute specializing in retirement security. A healthier generation of older workers has become a mainstay of the workforce in recent years.
Route Fifty
February 11, 2022
Black workers, along with Hispanic and Asian-American ones, are more likely to get paid poverty-level wages than their white counterparts, according to a 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
February 11, 2022
“There’s just no valid argument, I think, for excluding agriculture,” said Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C.
Costa has worked at EPI for 11 years, looking specifically at the intersection of immigration and labor policy issues. The nonprofit, nonpartisan institute was established in 1986 to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.
Statesman Journal
February 11, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which first presented its research last week to a task force of the American Federation of Teachers, employment in public elementary and secondary schools decreased by nearly 5% overall from fall 2019 to fall 2021. The number of people employed as teachers fell by 6.8%, bus drivers by 14.6%, and custodians by 6%.
Common Dreams
February 11, 2022
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, teachers in the public high school sector made around 19.2 percent less than other types of workers who also went to college as of 2019. Teachers in the country have made less money on a consistent basis when compared to their counterparts in other fields, an exception being the 1960s.
Newsweek
February 11, 2022
As of January 30, federal contract workers must be paid at least $15 an hour under an executive order Biden signed in April that was finalized by the Labor Department in November. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning nonprofit, estimated that the number of workers who got a raise when it took effect last month may have been as high as 390,000. That’s a substantial accomplishment.
New Republic
February 11, 2022
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) did not collect wage data specifically for school bus drivers in 2019 and 2020, but BLS economist Elka Torpey told Jacobin that their median hourly wage in 2018 was $15.58. According to David Cooper, who directs the Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Analysis and Research Network, the number appears to be similar for 2020. At full-time, year-round hours, it’s not enough for a single adult to sustain an acceptable standard of living in many states — let alone raise kids or plan for retirement.
Jacobin
February 11, 2022
A 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that nearly 40 percent of the animal slaughtering and processing workforce in the U.S. was foreign born and 70 percent of those workers were non-citizens. Meatpackers have increasingly relied on a limited number of immigrant worker visas over the last decade to staff their plants.
Politico
February 11, 2022