“Fifteen dollars now is worth a lot less than I think advocates thought it would be when a lot of these bills were proposed and enacted,” Dave Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute said in an interview.
Politico
March 24, 2023
But American child labor is making a comeback. Underage children are operating fryers in restaurant kitchens and assembling parts at auto plants. Last month, when the New York Times published a blockbuster expose on how some of the nation’s most prominent companies depend on subcontractors who illegally employ migrant children, it brought attention to an ongoing horror. The Economic Policy Institute recently crunched Labor Department data and discovered an almost 300 percent increase in child labor violations since 2015.
Washington Post
March 24, 2023
Last year, more than 120,000 U.S. workers participated in major strikes over the prior year, a significant increase according to an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the Economic Policy Institute. Still, it’s a considerable decline from pre-pandemic levels in 2018 and 2019, the institute said.
The USA Today
March 24, 2023
For many years, Michigan had the highest rate of unionization in the U.S.; as the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found in a recent report, in 2005, the state’s unionization rate was 1.7 times the national rate, while the median wage was 6 percent higher than the average median wage. Since Republicans passed right to work in 2012, according to Bureau of Labor statistics data, the state has lost 40,000, or 2.6 percent, of its union members.
Salon
March 24, 2023
But outside of those industries there are still a lot of options. That’s especially true in leisure and hospitality, according to Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute. “Pretty much every month, leisure and hospitality jobs have been chipping away at the shortfall,” she said.
Marketplace
March 24, 2023
To rebuild the public workforce in today’s tight labor market, policymakers must tackle several problems simultaneously.3 Actions should include increasing funding for state and local budgets that have been starved for decades; combating COVID-19 burnout among essential service workers; and closing the growing pay gap between the public and private sectors. According to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, state and local government workers earn approximately 10 percent to 15 percent less than comparable private sector employees.4
Center for American Progress
March 24, 2023
About 80% of American private-sector, nonunion workers will be required to use arbitration to settle disputes by 2024, according to a 2019 report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Bloomberg Law
March 24, 2023
“About 63% of the company’s workers make below $15 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks company wages.”
Fortune
March 24, 2023