Many workers are angry about how little they are paid — and who’s making more, if they can even find out. Chief executives outearn their workers by a ratio of 399 to 1, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A survey by the Pew Research Center found barely one-third of the nation’s employees described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied with their pay, with women and Blacks more likely to say they were unhappy. A 2020 survey by jobs platform Hired found women were offered less money for the same job title at the same company than male peers a majority of the time. And the American tradition of secrecy around remuneration is part of what makes these inequities possible.
The Washington Post
April 7, 2023
About half of private-sector businesses require workers to sign a non-compete agreement, which affects anywhere from 36 million to 60 million employees, according to 2019 data from the Economic Policy Institute. Polling shows a majority of Americans support largely banning the practice.
CT Public Radio
April 7, 2023
(Paywall) Quotes Jen on the victory of Brandon Johnson and the power and influence of organized labor in Chicago.
Crain's Chicago
April 7, 2023
Maryland is one of 30 states and Washington, D.C., that has a minimum wage higher than the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in the district.
The Daily Record
April 7, 2023
“There’s just tons of momentum, and once you slow the economy enough to get the unemployment rate moving up, it’s very hard to sort of turn that cruise ship back around,” said Josh Bivens, research director and chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN
April 7, 2023
That would be the highest minimum wage in the country, but compared to Wall Street payouts, this demand is modest. New York City’s 190,800 Wall Street workers earned a combined $33.7 billion in bonuses for their 2022 performance. The Economic Policy Institute has calculated that raising the state’s minimum wage to $21.25 would cost far less — just $9.5 billion.
Inequality.org
April 7, 2023
The goal for price inflation is around 2%. The standard formula for target wage growth, said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute, is that you add “long-term productivity growth — that’s about 1.5%,” she said. “So anything in the 3.5 range is certainly not going to be driving inflation.”
Marketplace
April 7, 2023
Josh Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said that while higher unemployment generally curbs wage growth and price pressures, wages “are no guide at all” right now with “the unexpected and weird shocks we’ve had over the past couple of years.”
The New York Times
April 7, 2023
(Paywall) Quotes Jen on the victory of Brandon Johnson and the power and influence of organized labor in Chicago.
Crain's Chicago
April 6, 2023
Union-busting, to borrow from H. Rap Brown, is as American as cherry pie. Employers get charged with violating federal labor law in no fewer than 41.5 percent of all union elections, according to the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.
The New Republic
March 31, 2023
Colorado educators also make roughly a third less than similarly educated professionals in the state, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank formed to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in policy discussions.
Colorado Springs Gazette
March 31, 2023
The Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this month that “violations of child labor laws and proposals to roll back child labor protections are on the rise across the country,” including bills under consideration to allow young teenagers to work in meatpacking plants.
Current Affairs
March 31, 2023
In the first video, captioned “Sonic sayz worker exploitation is no good,” Sonic relays what Tails has taught him about wage theft to Knuckles, who’s instantly ready to knock people’s heads together. According to Sonic (and the Economic Policy Institute), $50 billion is stolen from workers each year in the US.
The Mary Sue
March 31, 2023
“While I think that the White House is right that their best move is to appoint good people and then have faith in their judgement, I don’t agree with Powell’s recent rate hikes, nor the reasoning behind them,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Hill
March 31, 2023
Terri Gerstein is a fellow at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute. She spent more than 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, working in the state attorney general’s office and as a deputy labor commissioner.
New York Times
March 31, 2023
Under Hochul’s proposal, the minimum wage would rise modestly to $16.40 downstate by 2026. The governor’s plan ties the minimum wage to the rate of inflation but caps the increase at 3% in any one year. For the average minimum wage-earning New Yorker working full time, that’s an extra $670 a year starting in 2026, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Gothamist
March 31, 2023
Providers must balance running their business with what parents can afford to pay. The average annual cost of infant care in California is $1,412 a month, according to a 2020 estimate from the Economic Policy Institute. Over a year that’s more than in-state tuition at a 4-year college.
LAist
March 31, 2023
According to the Economic Policy Institute, which advocates for fair pay for low- and middle-income workers, Texas public school teachers get paid 21.5% less than college graduates in other professions.
Newsbreak
March 31, 2023
The average cost of infant care in Nevada is $951 a month, 8.7% less than the average rent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Care for a 4-year-old is $754 a month.
Nevada Current
March 31, 2023
Yet, despite the vital role public schools play in the education of future generations of Americans, the national public school system faces a myriad of problems in “equity, adequacy, effort, and sufficiency,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. Despite these issues, however, public school enrollment has, on average, increased from figures 10 years ago.
LI Herald
March 31, 2023
Seventeen years ago, Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker outlined a proposal he’d come up with for an agenda that the Economic Policy Institute was publishing for the next president—assuming that president was a Democrat. Hacker (who is now a Prospect board member) was proposing that the government create a “public option” for health insurance, under which Americans not yet eligible for Medicare could purchase a health insurance plan, equivalent to that provided by Medicare, from the government. As public-option plans didn’t have to deliver profits such as those that enriched major investors in private plans, they would be cheaper than their private competitors. And, by the logic of the market, they’d compel those private competitors to bring down their prices if they wanted to stay in business.
American Prospect
March 31, 2023
Contrary to the name, right-to-work laws make it “harder for workers’ organizations to sustain themselves financially” and “aim to undermine unions’ bargaining strength,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The USA Today
March 31, 2023
“The entire increase in unionization in 2022 was among workers of color—workers of color saw an increase of 231,000, while white workers saw a decrease of 31,000,” wrote the Economic Policy Institute in a press release in February. “Of all major racial and ethnic groups, Black workers continue to have the highest unionization rates, at 12.8%. This compares with 11.2% for white workers, 10.0% for Latinx workers, and 9.2% for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers”.
Payday Reports
March 31, 2023
“We don’t really have pensions anymore,” Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, previously told theGrio. In discussing how higher interest rates disproportionately affect prospective Black home buyers, Moore said, “401k’s are so risky. The stock market is risky. Homeownership has been that consistent, reliable method of building wealth.”
The Grio
March 31, 2023
March 15 was Equal Pay Day in the United States; however, not a lot has been done to close the gender pay gap in the last three decades, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Wright State Guardian
March 31, 2023
The legislation is also supported by organizations, including: The National Immigration Law Center (NILC); Jobs with Justice; Economic Policy Institute; National Employment Law Project (NELP); Tulane Immigrant Rights Clinic; AFL-CIO; and SEIU.
Office of Congressman Bobby Scott
March 31, 2023
In a September survey from Bankrate.com, more than half of respondents said that their incomes hadn’t kept up with rising household expenses amid persistent high inflation. A report from the Economic Policy Institute, meanwhile, found that, as of June 2022, 14% of gig workers in the U.S. earned less than the federal minimum wage and that 26% earned less than $10 per hour.
Tech Crunch
March 31, 2023
The upshot is that about 85% of U.S. workers today make $15 an hour or more, according to the Economic Policy Institute. When the Fight for $15 was getting off the ground, fewer than 60% did.
Fast Company
March 31, 2023