In a 2020 study by the Economic Policy Institute, the teacher wage penalty was shown to have grown from 6 percent in 1996 to 19.2 percent in 2019. The year before, the penalty had been even worse, at 22 percent.
“This is something where there’s been an attack on teachers,” said one author of the study, EPI fellow Lawrence Mishel, during the Policy Matters discussion. “We have not been putting in the resources, and this is something we really need to do to guarantee children have the professionals that they need.”
That lowering came from “widespread strikes and other actions by teachers in 2018 and 2019,” the study stated.
In Ohio, the wage penalty stands at 15.2 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Highland County Press
January 4, 2021
Because Social Security only taxes income up to an annual cap, which is $142,800 in 2021, when people who earn over that amount do better than everyone else more income escapes the Social Security tax as Christian Weller explains. The Economic Policy Institute calculates wages for the top 1% grew 158% since 1979, while wages for the bottom 90% of earners grew only 24%.
Forbes
January 4, 2021
July 2019 findings from the Economic Policy Institute showed more than 33 million American workers would benefit from a federal raise to a $15 minimum wage, including 116,000 workers in New Hampshire.
Seacoast Online
January 4, 2021
The largest share of essential workers is employed in health care and the food and agriculture sectors, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
El Paso Times
January 4, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “the gender wage gap refers to historically persistent differences between what men and women are paid in the workplace.” In 2019, the average woman earned $0.85 for every dollar a man earned.
Yahoo Finance
January 4, 2021
“This bill is too long, too complicated,” said Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
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“The most important thing that is not in the stimulus bill is aid to state and local governments,” said Lee. “If they don’t get enough aid from the federal government, they will have to start laying off workers.”
Scripps National News
January 4, 2021
According to research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, Pennsylvania is one of the states with the most to gain from additional pandemic unemployment assistance. The study found that the programs could actually “create or save 5.1 million jobs” in 2021 by helping “workers and their families keep their heads above water while breathing necessary life into the economic recovery.” Using their model, Pennsylvania’s job share would increase by 5.7% — which equates to 265,000 jobs gained. With the CARES Act set to expire, Pennsylvanians using those programs to make ends meet — will have to look elsewhere.
WHYY
January 4, 2021
Meanwhile, the turnabout in views about a $15 wage base has been head-spinning. Even states with relatively low minimums, like Florida and Virginia, are poised for significant increases in 2021 and headed toward $15, or at least the strong possibility of it, by 2026.
By then, 42% of the U.S. workforce will be covered by $15 minimum wage laws, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
USA Today
January 4, 2021
A study by the Economic Policy Institute concludes that “although Americans are working more productively than ever, the fruits of their labors have primarily accrued to those at the top and corporate profits, especially in recent years. From 1979 to 2018, net productivity rose 69.6 percent, while the hourly pay of typical workers essentially stagnated—increasing only 11.6 percent over 39 years (after adjusting for inflation).”
Forbes
January 4, 2021
Two researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C., come down on the side of the benefits of wage increases. They wrote that three academic studies published in 2020 did historical analyses of wage increases and concluded that they raised consumer spending in local markets. “Raising the minimum wage directly pushes back against the consumer demand shortfall by providing low-wage workers with money to boost the broader economy,” the Sept. 14 post stated.
Roswell Daily Record
January 4, 2021
A 2014 Economic Policy Institute analysis found that fewer people in the lower- and middle-classes were actually climbing the economic ladder today. In turn, they made less than their parents. As Intelligence Squared reported, “In the last 30 years, the wages of the top 1% have grown by 154%, while the bottom 90% has seen growth of only 17%.” What led to this phenomenon? Unequal income distribution, where those at the top receive much more than those on the bottom.
Entrepreneur
January 4, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 25.7 million workers in the US remain officially unemployed, otherwise out of work due to the pandemic, or have experienced a reduction in work hours or pay.
The Guardian
January 4, 2021
New Jersey is particularly pricey for child care. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual cost of infant care in the state is $12,988.
NJ.com
January 4, 2021
39. Black women, on average, earn 64 cents for every dollar a white man earns, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
New York Times
January 4, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a scholar at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama, told The Hill, “Reasonable time’ is not defined, and its ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, providing employers an immense loophole and leaving workers behind.” She predicted the change could cost tipped workers a collective $700 million a year, and shift more jobs from non-tipped to tipped.
FSR Magazine
January 4, 2021
The disparities run even deeper: Research shows that Black workers’ benefits are less likely to include paid sick days and the ability to work from home, and according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, access to paid sick days is “vastly unequal.” And that’s just about sick days.
NBC News
January 4, 2021
People who live in states that did not expand Medicaid, including Florida, Georgia, and other southern states, are less likely to have affordable care, says Reinert. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the pandemic has widened this access gap: As many as 12 million Americans lost employer-sponsored health insurance between February and August.
National Geographic
January 4, 2021
12 million more Americans may have lost health insurance since February, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, and a poll done in October by CNN found that 61% of Americans say they don’t want the Supreme Court to overturn the ACA.
CNN International Amanpour
December 24, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has estimated the rule would let employers take $700 million from tipped workers each year. That’s based on numbers before the industry suffered under the pandemic.
Scripps National News
December 24, 2020
And by increasing the share of nontipped work that can be done by tipped workers who are paid a lower base wage, the Trump administration’s new rule “will transfer large amounts of money from workers to their employers”—causing employees to lose more than $700 million annually, wrote Heidi Shierholz and David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank whose research foregrounds the interests of low-income workers.
Common Dreams
December 24, 2020
But Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a Labor Department economist during the Obama administration, told the Wall Street Journal that the rule does not address wage inequality, and instead could shift work to servers that would traditionally not fall to them.”If the administration wanted to raise pay for back-of-the-house workers, they could have supported a minimum-wage increase,” Shierholz said.
FOX 2 Detroit
December 24, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute last week published five charts showing some impacts of the Pandemic Recession, including these two:
Daily Kos
December 24, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a Labor Department economist during the Obama administration, told the Wall Street Journal that the move will “allow employers to shift work from non-tipped to tipped workers.”
Shierholz also argues that the rule does not address wage inequality, adding that if the Trump administration wanted to raise pay for back-of-the-house workers, “they could have supported a minimum wage increase.”
Fox News
December 24, 2020
But cutting this protection for workers has the potential to severely limit a tipped workers’ wage, according to Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), who previously served as Obama’s chief economist in his Labor Department. In an EPI release, she said that this “immense loophole” for employers could cost $700 million in servers’ wages annually—and that’s a pre-COVID-19 figure, which stands to be higher now.
Fast Company
December 24, 2020
Damage to public payrolls will ripple through a community, said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. “You start laying off firefighters and teachers and they spend less and that hurts your local businesses.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
December 24, 2020
Legally, employers are free to court other candidates, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“For the vast majority of workers, there is no legal right of recall, if the employer starts hiring again,” Shierholz said. “The exception to that is for unionized workers,” who often have specific rules about hiring and recall in their bargaining agreements.
Marketplace
December 24, 2020
Confronted with an economic collapse induced by the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. government took several measures—including direct stimulus checks, boosting the amount of unemployment insurance, and giving funds to businesses to keep people on payroll—to alleviate the challenges caused by business shutterings and job losses. Fast Company talked to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, about the government’s overall response: how it got off to a decent start before petering off into inaction— and leaving gaping inequities that need to be fixed in 2021.
Fast Company
December 24, 2020
“‘Reasonable time’ is not defined, and its ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, providing employers an immense loophole and leaving workers behind,” said Heidi Shierholz, a scholar at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department under President Obama.
The Hill
December 24, 2020
The rule also removed a previous requirement around how much time tipped workers could be required to spend on non-tipped work. Previously, the government limited the amount of time a tipped worker could spend on non-tipped activities to 20% of their shift. Doing away with that limit allows employers to underpay workers drastically, according to Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute who worked in the Labor Department under President Obama.
“It allows employers to have workers spend more time doing non-tipped work while they’re still getting paid sub-minimum wage,” said Shierholz.
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Over the course of a year, tipped workers would lose more than $700 million under this new rule, the EPI estimated last fall. That number has likely increased since the coronavirus pandemic, Shierholz noted. With indoor dining drastically reduced, many restaurants that have managed to stay open have shifted to mostly non-tipped work, such as preparing carryout orders.
CBS Moneywatch
December 24, 2020
The vice president didn’t mention how the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts overwhelmingly benefited wealthy households and powerful corporations, with corporate income tax rates slashed from 35% to 21%, corporate tax revenues plummeting, and a surge in stock buybacks while workers saw “no discernible wage increase” according to a report released last year by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy.
Common Dreams
December 24, 2020