Heidi Shierholz
Senior Economist and Director of Policy
Areas of expertise
Labor policy • Wage inequality • Unemployment insurance • Long-term unemployment • Labor force participation • Minimum wage • Overtime
Biography
Heidi Shierholz leads EPI’s policy team, which monitors wage and employment policies coming out of Congress and the administration and advances a worker-first policy agenda. Throughout her career, Shierholz has educated policymakers, journalists, and the public about the effects of economic policies on low- and middle-income families. Her research and insights on labor and employment policy, the effects of automation on the labor market, wage stagnation, inequality, and many other topics routinely shape policy proposals and inform economic news coverage. Her work has been cited in many broadcast, radio, print, and online news outlets, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and HuffPost.
Shierholz was an economist at EPI from 2007 to 2014 and she rejoined EPI in 2017. From 2014 to 2017, she served the Obama administration as chief economist at the Department of Labor. She worked with Labor Secretary Thomas Perez and other department leaders to develop and execute initiatives to boost workers’ rights, wages, and benefits; to protect workers’ savings, and to increase workplace safety. She also provided economic analysis on the wages of jobs added during the recovery, brought heightened attention to the need for paid family leave, and fought for new regulations guaranteeing overtime pay for millions of workers and paid sick leave for over a million federal contract workers.
Prior to joining EPI in 2007, Shierholz was assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto. Shierholz commutes to work on a steel-framed bicycle and in her—limited—free time tends to her beehives.
Education
Ph.D., Economics, University of Michigan
M.A., Economics, University of Michigan
M.S., Statistics, Iowa State University
B.A., Mathematics, Grinnell College
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A perfect pairing: New tip provisions and a strong minimum wage
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News from EPI › Secretary Acosta went to great lengths to bury DOL’s analysis showing his tip rule is bad for workers
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News from EPI › U.S. Court of Appeals decision on fiduciary rule will hurt retirement savers
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News from EPI › Congress should pass bill with protections for tipped workers
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EPI public comments on Alaska’s tipped pooling arrangements
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EPI comment regarding DOL’s proposed “tip stealing” rule
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The Trump administration’s attempt to dismantle the fiduciary rule: A year in review
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News from EPI › DOL scrubs economic analysis that showed its tip pooling rule would be terrible for workers
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Year one of the Trump administration: Normalizing itself by working for the top 1 percent
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Unrigging the economy to grow the middle class: Pennsylvania takes the lead on overtime
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Women would lose $4.6 billion in earned tips if the administration’s ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized: Overall, workers would lose $5.8 billion
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Employers would pocket $5.8 billion of workers’ tips under Trump administration’s proposed ‘tip stealing’ rule
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News from EPI › Proposed rule would protect employers who steal workers’ hard-earned tips
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Federal overtime pay bill would boost paychecks by $1.2 billion dollars annually
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News from EPI › Financial advisers win, and working people lose $10.9 billion, as full implementation of the fiduciary rule is delayed
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Millions fewer would get overtime protections if the overtime threshold were only $31,000
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What’s at stake in the states if the 2016 federal raise to the overtime pay threshold is not preserved—and what states can do about it: State action to modernize overtime rules (research report)
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State action to save workers’ overtime pay: Fact sheet for “What’s at stake in the states if the federal raise to the overtime pay threshold is not resurrected—and what states can do about it”
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Specific policy and legislative guidance for updating state overtime protections: State action to modernize overtime rules (policy guidance)
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News from EPI › DOL overtime appeal is welcome news; department should make no attempts to weaken the rule
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EPI comment to the SEC regarding the fiduciary rule
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Letter to House Committee on Education & the Workforce regarding H.R. 3441
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Letter to U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Wells Fargo arbitration
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Forced arbitration is bad for consumers
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What to watch out for in Trump’s speech on regulation later this morning
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EPI comment regarding DOL Request for Information on the overtime rule
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EPI comment on the proposed 18 month delay of key provisions of the fiduciary rule
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News from EPI › DOL proposes 18 month delay of full implementation of fiduciary rule, setting the stage for retirement savers to lose $10.9 billion