“As wages have grown, fewer people are working at exactly the federal minimum wage, even if many are still paid $8, $9, or $10 an hour,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Quartz. “As far as whether the minimum wage leads to better lives or fewer jobs I think the research is clear,” he added. “Minimum wage increases have not led to large job losses and instead have raised the earnings of the lowest paid workers.”
Quartz
January 13, 2023
Agreements are sometimes foisted upon low-wage workers, preventing them from jumping ship to a different restaurant or retail store offering higher pay. Among workplaces paying an average of less than $13 an hour, 29% have noncompetes for all workers, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
January 6, 2023
Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, praised the FTC’s proposed ban on noncompetes on Twitter, where she wrote, “The only source of power nonunionized workers have vis-à-vis their employers is their ability to quit and take a job elsewhere.” Shierholz added that noncompetes aren’t necessary for the protection of companies’ intellectual property and that they “reduce wages, keep workers from finding better opportunities, and reduce the formation of new firms.”
Fox Business
January 6, 2023
Inequality in the U.S. deepened in 2021, with the country’s top 0.1% experiencing a 18.5% jump in earnings from the previous year, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
MarketWatch
January 6, 2023
In 2019, one estimate from researchers at Cornell University and the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said between one-quarter and nearly half of all private-sector workers had signed a noncompete agreement.
MarketWatch
January 6, 2023
“The labor market clearly remains strong,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “We are now seeing that the household survey and the payroll survey are showing similar signs of strength, and wage growth is looks to be coming down.”
CNBC
January 6, 2023
According to a 2019 study by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, somewhere between a quarter to about a half of all workers are subject to noncompete clauses.
NBC News
January 6, 2023
Federal aid provided during the pandemic helped lift many Black and Hispanic people out of poverty by 2021, though it remains to be seen how inflation and the end of benefits such as the child tax credit will affect them, according to a 2022 study by the Economic Policy Institute.
“Safety net programs mitigated the worst effects of the pandemic recession, particularly for Black and Hispanic households,” the study concluded. “We have the capacity to significantly lower poverty rates through progressive policy and should not wait for another global pandemic to do so.”
Pew Charitable Trust
January 6, 2023
The bottom half of Americans hold just 2% of the country’s wealth, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, while the top 1% hold about a third. And middle-class and low-wage Americans saw a pay cut in 2021, while the top 1% saw their average wages grow, according to an analysis from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
January 6, 2023