Firms are holding on to workers but not expanding, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, owing to economic uncertainty brought on by tariffs and policy volatility.
Employees, she said, sense that even a modest upswing in layoffs could “translate into a spike in unemployment pretty rapidly.”
The National Post (Canada)
April 20, 2026
The end result is easy to anticipate, said Ismael Cid-Martinez, economist with the Economic Policy Institute. More people will lose their food stamps because they can’t find work. They’ll go without and suffer all the attendant problems that come with chronic hunger. That condition causes people to fall sick more frequently and puts them at greater risk of chronic disease, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. For adults, that means even more difficulty finding a job. For kids, it also means delayed physical development and the inability to concentrate at school.
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“Not to be overly pessimistic about this, but I think that one of the important things to keep in mind is, these are all policy choices,” Cid-Martinez said. “We’re not in this position because of forces beyond our control.”
The American Prospect
April 20, 2026
The Economic Policy Institute provides families with updated cost-of-living data for various metro areas throughout the U.S. with a helpful Family Budget Calculator.
Investopedia
April 20, 2026
This unholy concentration of wealth has occurred even though worker productivity has risen. Americans are working harder but getting paid less for the fruits of their labors. Research released last month by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the gap between a typical worker’s pay and productivity has risen dramatically since 1979.
The Hill
April 20, 2026
The median cost to get full-time care for an infant in the United States is $14,106 per year, or $1,176 per month. That figure is determined by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank that used data from the Department of Labor and the nonprofit Child Care Aware of America to calculate estimates for every state.
If those numbers seem low, you might reside in a city or on a coast, where care is generally more expensive. The median monthly costs vary greatly around the nation, from a low of $572 in Mississippi, $1,342 in Illinois, $1,829 in California and a high of $2,363 in Washington, D.C. The median above comes from the state in the middle of the range: Nebraska.
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According to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, child care started to become more expensive than housing in many parts of the country about 10 years ago. The uptick, she hypothesized, might be attributed to increases in the costs of commercial rent and labor, especially since the service can’t be automated or optimized. Care is typically more expensive for an infant than it is for older children because babies require more workers, Gould said. Most state regulations mandate that one worker can care for only four or five babies at a time.
New York Times Headway Newsletter
April 20, 2026
According to the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment has increased for Black Americans by around 1.1% under the Trump administration so far. However, many experts remain hopeful that despite new challenges, affected families will persevere.
The Fulcrum
April 20, 2026
Teaching has a widely identified problem: It fails to attract talent due to poor pay. According to the Economic Policy Institute, teachers, on average, earn 73.4 cents for every dollar relative to other college-educated professionals. Accounting for a “benefits advantage,” the compensation gap decreases somewhat, but incomes still are about 16.7% lower than wages for similar workers.
Idaho Statesman
April 20, 2026
Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed to Federal Reserve data to underline the discrepancy between the tariffs Americans have paid versus the refunds they are seeing this year. A February report found that the federal government collected about $180 billion more in customs duties in 2025 compared to 2024. Tax refunds, however, are only up about $25 billion over the same time period. Bivens said, if anything, looking at strictly the tariffs collected underestimates the increased prices paid by consumers.
“This understates the costliness to U.S. households though, because tariffs also allow non-importing firms to raise their prices if they’re competing with imports,” Bivens said. “And, the lower incomes elsewhere in the economy due to tariffs also means other forms of taxes are collecting less money. So this $180 billion overstates how much revenue they’re bringing in.”
Salon
April 20, 2026
Labor advocates, however, have criticized the “no tax on tips” policy given its limited benefit and the risk it poses in expanding tips as income for low-wage workers and reducing base wages.
Other parts of the law championed by Trump that “created the tipped income deduction simultaneously enacted massive cuts to health care, energy, and food assistance programs that will cause tremendous harm for millions of low-income households, including some with tipped workers – all to finance tax cuts for the ultrawealthy,” wrote researchers with the Economic Policy Institute in a February 2026 report.
The Guardian
April 20, 2026
Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris latched on to the no tax on tips policy during the 2024 campaign, despite warnings from economists and others that it is a “deceptive ploy,” as the Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper and Nina Mast put it last year.
“It does nothing to address the low wages, income instability, wage theft, and abuse tipped workers already face,” the pair reiterated in February. “Instead, it may undermine efforts to raise tipped minimum wages, push more workers into tipped jobs, increase workloads, and prompt customers to tip less if they believe tipped workers receive special tax treatment.”
Common Dreams
April 20, 2026