Putting aside billionaires, the gap between CEOs and workers alone has exploded over the last several decades. Between 1978 and 2022, top CEO compensation rose more than 1,200%, compared with the 15.3% rise in a typical worker’s compensation, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
MarketWatch
January 16, 2024
The need for paid sick days to help stabilize workers’ finances is clear through the data, according to an Economic Policy Institute report released in November. Compared to 63% of private sector workers having access to paid sick days in 2010, 78% now do, and during the same period, the percentage of the lowest wage workers who had paid sick days almost doubled, the think tank found. The report’s authors also calculated what workers would be giving up in housing, groceries, transportation and other essentials for their unpaid sick days.
“If we think about taking off work without any assets or savings, that could have a very big impact on the family budget,” said Hilary Wething, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and one of the report’s authors. “If a worker loses wages for taking off five days for example, if they have RSV or their kid has RSV that could be their entire grocery budget for the month. If they take three days off, it could be the entire monthly budget of utilities and two days could be a monthly budget of gas, which could make it difficult to get to work. You can see how a series of events could cascade for them and become a much bigger problem than it had to be.”
States Newsroom
January 16, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Meta employs so many H-1B workers that it has declared itself an “H-1B dependent” firm in government filings for years because more than 15% of its total U.S. workforce is H-1B workers.
The Mercury News
January 16, 2024
“The franchise model is a major factor in child labor violations because it incentivizes a race to the bottom in terms of labor standards,” said Nina Mast, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute who researches child labor laws.
The Washington Post
January 16, 2024
We get a different view on raising the minimum wage from Sebastian Martinez Hickey, researcher for the EARN (Economic Analysis and Research Network) team at the Economic Policy Institute.
FAIR Counterspin
January 12, 2024
Luckily, a set of minimum wage increases for Florida workers began in September 2023, raising base pay by $1, up to $12 per hour. The minimum wage is set to hike to $16 per hour by the end of 2026, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Quartz
January 12, 2024
The present law exempts some nonprofit research organizations from the 85,000 H-1B annual cap. In its comments on the proposed rule, the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, said the White House is loosening the definition of nonprofit research entities “for the express purpose of expanding eligibility” for H-1B visa groups. It argues that the rule change could enable, for instance, a nonprofit hospital to use H-1B workers to move IT jobs overseas.
Tech Target
January 12, 2024
But increasing the number of visas alone won’t solve the problem if corporate giants stay the course. If you look at the top companies sponsoring H-1B visas in 2023, it’s a virtual who’s who of Big Tech. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Meta employs so many H-1B workers that it has declared itself an “H-1B dependent” firm in government filings for years because more than 15% of its total U.S. workforce is H-1B workers.
CalMatters
January 12, 2024
According to the Economic Policy Institute, Florida is the 16th state so far where legislation has been proposed over the past two years to ease child labor restrictions, even though violations of child labor law have been on the rise.
Orlando Weekly
January 12, 2024
While 24 states have adopted the CROWN Act, Republican senators have successfully blocked the anti-discrimination bill’s passing on a federal level twice since its introduction in 2021. According to the Economic Policy Institute, legislators did not bring it before Congress in 2023.
Mother Jones
January 12, 2024
Karakatsanis doesn’t mention wage theft in this passage, but according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. employers steal as much as $50 billion a year from workers in the form of unpaid wages.
Current Affairs
January 12, 2024
Christian Science Monitor
January 12, 2024
“Many workers are harmed by employer misclassification—particularly those in the lowest-wage and most difficult jobs, such as nail salon workers, truck drivers, and construction workers,” the Economic Policy Institute said in a written statement. A previous EPI report on misclassification estimated thousands of dollars in lost income annually for workers in various job types who are deemed independent contractors instead of employees.
Bloomberg Law
January 12, 2024
About 89% of all employers host compulsory captive audience meetings when their workers try to organize, according to National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) documents. A report by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that those meetings slash election win rates from 73% to 47%.
The Stranger
January 12, 2024
More than ever, teacher pay is at crisis levels, with what this report from the Economic Policy Institute pinpoints as pay existing at “26.4% less than other similarly educated professionals in 2022—the lowest level since 1960.”
Education World
January 12, 2024
Another issue for teachers is low pay: A report from Sylvia Allegretto, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research who’s also a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, found the pay penalty for teachers and comparable college graduates who were working was at a record large gap in 2022 — a pay penalty of 26.4%.
Business Insider
January 12, 2024
Despite the tapering off, 165,000 is not too shabby. According to Elise Gould, the senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, the Q4 monthly average exceeds “what’s necessary to keep up with working age population growth.”
ArcaMax
January 12, 2024
Right now, the cost of child care is out of reach for many of our state’s families. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the annual cost of child care in West Virginia for an infant is nearly $9,000.
Charleston Gazette-Mail
January 12, 2024
In 2021, salaries grew at the fastest pace for the top 0.1% of earners, while the bottom 90% of workers saw their annual wages edge lower, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute.
Business Insider
January 12, 2024
Josh Bivens, chief economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said although Trump’s comments are “bad,” he thinks a 2024 crash would be “very surprising.”
“For now, the economy is strong and there’s no glaring vulnerability like a huge asset market bubble someplace — spending is mostly being financed out of earnings from a strong labor market,” he said. “So, my expectation is for a quite strong 2024. There are always wild cards like some crazy geopolitical shock, but the economic fundamentals of the U.S. look good for 2024.”
The Hill
January 12, 2024
“The only way to address school segregation for the many children … who live in highly concentrated ghettos and large metropolitan areas in this country is by residential desegregation,” said Richard Rothstein from the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Rothstein researched why residential areas are so highly segregated, and found that government policy is mostly to blame. “The segregation of our major metropolitan areas in this country today was created by explicit, racially-conscious, public policy on the part of the federal, state, and local governments.”
Washington Examiner
January 12, 2024
Florida is at least the 16th state to introduce roll back child labor protections in the past two years, and the 13th state to introduce such legislation in 2023, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Florida Phoenix
January 12, 2024
The average annual cost for infant care in Georgia is $8,530, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
It’s $7,306 a year for a 4-year-old, according to the institute.
WRDW-TV
January 12, 2024
And while there appears to be no chance of either happening with Republicans in the majority in the House, the Economic Policy Institute reports that 22 US states and 38 cities and counties raised their minimum wages this month. The highest state minimum wage is now Washington’s $16.28, and the highest local one is $20.29 (albeit for large employers only) in the Seattle suburb of Tukwila.
Bloomberg
January 12, 2024
The traditional set-up of manager-employee relations often assumes that a worker-manager relationship is inherently antagonistic. But negotiating a bargaining agreement does not have to be confrontational and can earn wins that work for both sides and make the workplace better.
“There will be some growing pains as things get established, but if you really embrace the mechanisms for transparency and communication and openness, it actually ends up being a real productivity and efficiency enhancer and really pays off over the long haul for the organization,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of EPI.
Prism Reports
January 12, 2024
Wage compression can happen when federal or state minimum wages increase. And 30 states and Washington, D.C., have increased their minimum wage since 2014, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
January 12, 2024
Uber, Lyft and DoorDash aren’t sweating it. All said Tuesday they won’t change their operations based on the new standard.
“It only will come into play if a worker is claiming a violation,” said Sam Sanders with the Economic Policy Institute. She said we can probably aIso expect lawsuits from those big tech companies.
But it’s not just the so-called gig economy that’s subject to these rules.
“It’s, you know, construction workers, nail salon workers, janitors, lots of other people who are vulnerable to being misclassified,” Sanders said.
And who now stand a better chance of getting the pay and protections other workers get.
Marketplace
January 12, 2024
Alaska was one of several states where such bills were introduced last year, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Anchorage Daily News
January 12, 2024
According to the NELP analysis, more than 21 million Americans work in industries plagued by misclassification: construction, trucking, delivery, home care, personal care, agricultural, and janitorial and building service occupations. When misclassified, these workers lose as much as $18,000 per year in income and job benefits, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Quartz
January 12, 2024
The Economic Policy Institute reports that nationwide the number of employed school bus drivers has dropped below pre-pandemic levels, with roughly 15 percent fewer driving in K to 12 schools in September 2023 than in September 2019.
Fast Company
January 12, 2024