Many journalists and policy analysts started paying attention to noncompetes “a few years back when it was revealed that the sub chain Jimmy John’s was forcing its sandwich makers to sign the agreements,” Jordan Weissman writes at Semafor. Jimmy John’s dropped that requirement after a lawsuit, but noncompete clauses have morphed into a “yoke for low-wage hourly workers who ordinarily have little say over terms of their employment.” In fact, “the only source of power non-unionized workers have vis-à-vis their employers is their ability to quit and take a job elsewhere,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a statement.
The Week
January 13, 2023
In Michigan, a 2019 survey by the Economic Policy Institute revealed roughly 55 percent of the state’s more than 4 million workers were subject to …(paywall).
Crain's Detroit Business
January 13, 2023
The federal minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour since 2009, when it was increased by 70 cents. That is the longest period without a raise in the history of the minimum wage. At the other end of the growth ladder, CEO pay has exploded. From 1978 to 2020, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,322%, out-gaining S&P stock market growth (817%) by a considerable margin, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In contrast, compensation of the average worker grew by just 18% during that time and the minimum wage increased 174%, from $2.65 an hour.
ecoRI News
January 13, 2023
“People often invoke the damage done by the 2011 showdown over the debt ceiling,” Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post last year. “They point to stock market losses, increases in ‘economic uncertainty’ indices, and estimates of how much higher interest rates went in the showdown’s aftermath. But they tend to miss what was by far the greatest damage done by the 2011 debt ceiling episode: the passage of the Budget Control Act (BCA), a piece of legislation that is relatively unknown to the lay public.”
Truthout
January 13, 2023
“Exorbitant CEO pay is a contributor to rising inequality that we could restrain without doing any damage to the wider economy,” Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute recently recently wrote. “CEOs are getting ever-higher pay over time because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related.”
Minnesota Reformer
January 13, 2023
Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said that not raising the debt ceiling could lead to spending cuts but making concessions to raise it could as well, based on Republicans’ demands.
The Hill
January 13, 2023
A report released by nonprofit think-tank, the Economic Policy Institute, shows that the teacher wage gap reached an all-time high in 2021. Compared to their peers in similar professions, teachers suffer from pay equity earning, on average, about 77 cents on the dollar compared to their peers in similar professions.
Black Wall Street Times
January 13, 2023
A new Economic Policy Institute report finds that teachers made 23.5 percent less than comparable college graduates in 2021. That’s the widest gap ever — despite the extraordinary challenges teachers have faced during the pandemic. The gap is even wider in some of the states with the largest teacher shortages, reaching 32 percent in Arizona, for example.
Ohio Capital Journal
January 13, 2023
Those private-sector jobs drove the quick recovery from the crash, Economic Policy Institute Senior Analyst Elise Gould said, since governments added only a net of 3,000 jobs in December and that sector’s employment is still 2.3% below pre-crash levels. State universities and colleges reported a 23,000-job drop in December.
People’s World
January 13, 2023
The outlook on teacher pay is not great in Colorado. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Colorado’s teacher pay penalty was the largest in the nation at 36% in 2021. Many people were happy to get their $750 TABOR rebate checks last year as inflation soared, but in 2019, Magellan Strategies found only 46% of voters they polled approved of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
KDVR
January 13, 2023