The Economic Policy Institute, the One Fair Wage campaign, and others have published research showing that tipped workers in states that eliminated the subminimum wage enjoy higher earnings, face less harassment on the job, and are less likely to live in poverty. It can also reduce race and gender inequities perpetuated by the tipped wage.
Human Rights Watch
November 4, 2022
But will sacrificing working families to a recession really bring inflation down? It’s unlikely considering the source of rising prices. Wage gains made by in demand workers have already been eaten up by what the AFL-CIO union federation coined “Greedflation,” leading to an overall 2.4 percent drop in real wages. According to the Economic Policy Institute, less than 8 percent of recent inflation is due to rising labor costs. For reference, that is a miniscule amount compared to the historical rate of 61.8 percent. Rather, the biggest recent driver has been runaway corporate profits at 53.9 percent. To put just how explosive these increases have been into context, normally corporate profits are responsible for just 11.4 percent of inflation.
Triple Pundit
November 4, 2022
In response, Fields shared an Economic Policy Institute report on employers’ common anti-union intimidation tactics with the News. The report repeatedly references a national survey naming “management pressure” as the top reason employees vote against unionization, often prompted by the threat of job losses and employers encouraging supervisors to have one-on-one conversations about unionization with their subordinates.
Yale Daily News
November 4, 2022
As much as investors love a good earnings report, Corporate America’s cash machine has disproportionately fueled the inflationary boom. A study by Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, found that as price pressures were cranking up in 2021, fattening company profit margins accounted for more than half the increase. Labor costs contributed less than 8% — a flip of the dynamic that held from 1979 to 2019.
Financial Advisor
November 4, 2022
Moreover, today’s inflation is very different from the stagflation of the 1970s. Then, labor unions were strong; now, they are nearly extinct. Wages aren’t keeping up with rising prices, much less driving them. Even Fed officials admit that today’s inflation is driven largely by the notorious supply chain disruptions attending the rapid opening of economies from the Covid shutdown, by the war in Ukraine and Russian sanctions that roiled gas and food supply, by the ravages of extreme weather, including droughts across the US and China—and by corporations’ using the crisis to pocket record profits. An analysis of the Economic Policy Institute showed that profit markups accounted for more than half of price hikes and wage increases less than one-10th.
The Nation
November 4, 2022
Our new series, “People-Side Economics,” expands on these perspectives, exposing the bias and half-truths we hear every day, and bringing ideas we can use in organizing. In this third installment of the series, Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz talks with Convergence editorial board member Stephanie Luce about what does—and doesn’t—cause inflation, and how worker power plays a part in fighting it.
Convergence
October 28, 2022
Economists use an “employment multiplier” to calculate the number of indirect jobs supported by a worker, and according to the independent Economic Policy Institute, mining has an employment multiplier of 3.9, meaning this state’s 20,800 mining and logging jobs (piled together again for convenience’s sake) may support 81,120 other jobs, for a total of 101,920. That’s not inconsequential, but it’s also not 134,000.
LA Progressive
October 28, 2022
Nationwide, families spend an estimated $1 trillion in Social Security benefits each year, according to figures from the National Committee to Support and Preserve Medicare, while economists with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute have argued expanding social security benefits by raising taxes on the rich could have an even more pronounced economic impact.
Newsweek
October 28, 2022
Mecklenburg is the most unequal county in North Carolina as the top 1% make more than 30 times the bottom 99%, data from the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute show.
WCNC Charlotte
October 28, 2022