Media clips

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• More students of color are attending Cape Cod schools. But the vast majority of teachers are white

  Nationwide, fewer young people are pursuing teaching careers. From 2008 to 2015, the number of college students earning education degrees fell 15 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Teacher retention may be an even bigger hurdle, with the turnover rate for teachers of color surpassing that of white teachers by 20 to 30 percent.

  Boston Globe July 30, 2021
• What’s a “Stuck Nation”? America in 2021, paralyzed by injustice and inequality

  As the Obama years drew to a close, the Economic Policy Institute observed astutely that the country had “suffered from rising income inequality and chronically slow growth in the living standards of low- and moderate-income Americans.”

  The erosion of the middle class that has been in the making at least since the 1970s — when American workers stopped seeing their wages grow at a pace with their increasing productivity — was continuing.  By August 2016, EPI reported that from 1973 until 2015, while productivity increased by more than 73%, hourly pay for workers went up only 11% — in other words, productivity grew by more than six times the rise in wages earned by workers.

  Salon July 30, 2021
• Letter to the editor: PRO Act would restore economic balance by shoring up middle-class wages

  During that time, wages rose with productivity. However, over the last 40 years, despite advancements in automation and technology, which increased worker productivity by nearly 70%, wages have increased less than 12%, the Economic Policy Institute has found.

  Kent Ravenna Record-Courier July 30, 2021
• Inside the disagreement and inaction in Congress over raising the minimum wage, which hasn’t gone up in 12 years

  A recent report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute finds that the federal minimum wage is worth 21% less than it was in 2009.

  Business Insider July 30, 2021
• July 30th
  July 30, 2021
• Inequality has soared during the pandemic–and so has C.E.O. compensation

  In 2020, the data shows, the average C.E.O. of an S. & P. 500 company made $15.5 million—two hundred and ninety-nine times as much as the median-paid employee. Although we do not have directly comparable numbers going back in time, a forthcoming study by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra of the Economic Policy Institute tracks the average C.E.O.’s pay and the average worker’s pay (and the ratio of one to the other) for the three hundred and fifty largest public companies in the United States. They estimate that, in 1978, the average C.E.O. made $1.7 million, adjusted for inflation, which was 31.4 times the average worker’s pay. Since that time, the share of all wages and salaries collected by the highest-earning one per cent of Americans has almost doubled, reaching its current level of about thirteen per cent. Roughly forty per cent of the people who make up that one per cent are executives, and their escalating compensation, Mishel and Kandra argue, has spilled over to other top managers in for-profit firms and large nonprofits alike. The power of example aside, today’s corporate executives frequently derive financial benefit from actions (outsourcing, downsizing, merging, defeating union drives) that directly or indirectly reduce pay and opportunity further down the line. In this way, too, executive pay has arguably been a significant driver, and not just a symptom, of rising inequality. That insight has led a growing number of local, state, and federal lawmakers to develop policy proposals that would reward or penalize companies based on their pay ratios.

  The New Yorker July 30, 2021
• Opinion: How to close the wealth gap from the bottom up

  Cites EPI chart on retirement savings.

  Washington Post July 30, 2021
• ‘Broke again’: Child tax credit payments collide with debt and eviction for working families

  Her income was enough that her fiance could stay home with the two children they had at that point. Day care for an infant and a toddler in Dayton could cost around $800, according to the Economic Policy Institute. 

  Washington Post July 30, 2021
• 73 Major Corporations Paid Just 5.3% Federal Tax Rate Between 2018 and 2020: Report

  Thirty-nine U.S. corporations reaping over $120 billion in profits between 2018 and 2020—the first three years of the so-called “GOP tax scam”—paid no net federal income tax, or claimed refunds during that period, a report published Thursday by the Institution on Taxation and Economic Policy revealed.

  …

  Indeed, a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Popular Democracy showed that the TCJA “delivered big benefits to the rich and corporations but nearly none for working families.”

   

  Common Dreams July 30, 2021
• Millions of low-wage women are being left behind in the pandemic recovery. A lack of care infrastructure is to blame.

  According to an Economic Policy Institute report, 92 percent of the 2.2 million domestic workers are women, and just over half are women of color. These women are the nannies, housekeepers and health aides who work inside homes and in assisted living homes, senior and childcare centers to provide caregiving and cleaning services.

  Yahoo Finance July 30, 2021
• Nonprofit calls on Missouri, Arkansas to take more measures against pandemic

  The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986, focuses on the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions, according to its website.

  An EPI blog post on Wednesday pointed out as the COVID-19 delta variant spreads across the country, and hospitalizations rise, states with low vaccination rates — such as Missouri and Arkansas — have become more vulnerable to economic disruption.

  …

  In Arkansas, a law going into effect prohibits state leaders from implementing mask mandates and declaring public health emergencies, according to EPI.

  “The policy also prohibits local governments from enforcing mask mandates, though private businesses are permitted to require masks if they choose,” it said.

  …

  EPI also called on Missouri to restore federal pandemic unemployment insurance benefits.

  “The economic situation in Missouri is likely to get worse before it gets better,” the post said. “Even if the state does not mandate lockdowns or similar measures, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases will slow economic activity in many ways.”

  …

  “The final step Arkansas and Missouri policymakers should take is enacting paid sick leave,” the EPI said. “Workers exposed to COVID-19 should not have to choose between working while sick or being unable to pay their bills.”

  During the earlier wave of the pandemic (in 2020), EPI said, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act provided some sick leave for workers at businesses employing fewer than 500 people, but the provisions expired at the end of the year.

  Fulton Sun July 30, 2021
• CEO diversity: does it explain CEO-to-employee pay ratio?

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, the CEO-to-employee pay ratio increased by 1000% in the past 40 years.

  …

  CEO-to-employee pay ratio increased nearly 1000% in the last 40 years according to the Economic Policy Institute, widening the gap between average Americans and the top 1%. Reporting of this gap by US public firms was mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, with the first gap data becoming available in 2017. The paper explores how female and minority CEOs, given their background, may have “softer” management styles and approaches to personnel issues, which may translate to more equitable pay and lower CEO-to-employee pay ratios.

  World Economic Forum July 30, 2021
• The huge Democratic bet on ‘bricks and butter’

  Josh Bivens, research director of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal group that has long advocated for larger public investments, says a reasonable estimate might be that such investment programs will constitute about half of the $3.5 trillion Democratic package. At roughly that level, with the added spending on hard infrastructure from the bipartisan plan added in, he projects the Biden proposal would fund a durable increase in public investment equal to about 1 percentage point of the economy, far more than either Bill Clinton or Obama, the last two Democratic presidents, achieved.

  In fact, Bivens says, the Democratic proposals would represent a net increase in new public investment probably unmatched since the late 1950s, when the nation built the interstate highway system that facilitated a massive move to the suburbs and also poured billions into education and scientific research after Russia took the lead in the space race by launching its Sputnik satellite.

  “It’s totally different from anything put forward by Obama or Clinton,” Bivens says. “In terms of any kind of coherent strategic focus there’s been nothing like this since the build-out of the suburbs, and the buildup of the educational system” during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

  CNN July 23, 2021
• How Joe Biden’s order on noncompetes could make it easier to quit your job

  About 3 in 10 workers making less than $13 an hour work for employers that require these agreements, according to research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  CBS Moneywatch July 23, 2021
• Fact check: Biden makes false claims about Covid-19, auto prices and other subjects at CNN town hall

  Facts First: Biden made very clear he wasn’t sure what the real number of workers was, but still the numbers he used were way off, according to his own administration’s previous estimates. Psaki told reporters on July 7 that noncompete agreements affect “over 30 million people” in the private sector. A White House document published on July 9, meanwhile, put the figure at “some 36 to 60 million workers,” citing an estimate from the Economic Policy Institute think tank.

  CNN July 23, 2021
• Are you a victim of wage theft? Denver will soon have a new investigative unit for that.

  The average minimum wage worker loses approximately $3,300 per year due to wage theft, according to a survey conducted by the Economic Policy Institute. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment received 550 reports of wage theft in Denver in 2020, according to a city press release, but only 340 were claims of less than $2,000 and therefore were not criminally prosecuted.

  Colorado Newsline July 23, 2021
• Biden Echoes Progressives, Saying Low Wages Are Driving Worker Shortage

  But research has shown that many frontline workers are unwilling to work to serve increasingly hostile customers while making low wages, especially while risking exposure to COVID-19 at their workplace or while using public transit. Wages have largely stayed stagnant since before the pandemic, writes the Economic Policy Institute, but with workers having to wade through anti-mask and anti-vaccine customers, “The wages for a harder, riskier job should be higher.”

  Truthout July 23, 2021
• Over 40 Progressive Orgs Unite to Pressure Congress to Pass Pro-Union PRO Act

  The coalition is made up of influential organizations representing a range of interests. Members of the Worker Power Coalition include political organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, MoveOn and the Working Families Party; climate groups like the Sunrise Movement, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club; and other organizations like Economic Policy Institute. It also has the backing of several major unions like Communications Workers of America and International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT).

  Truthout July 23, 2021
• Obama Labor Officials Back Union-Boosting Bill At Hearing

  Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee member Bill Cassidy, R-La., pressed former U.S. Department of Labor chief economist Heidi Shierholz on the implications of a chart showing parallels between trends in union membership rates and the percentage of income going to the top 10% of earners going back to 1917. Shierholz, now the director of policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, had cited the chart in testimony supporting the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions.

  Cassidy, who was a medical doctor before entering politics, suggested these trends have more to do with the movement of high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas than legal roadblocks to unionizing, quipping “we contrast between association and causation” in medicine. Shierholz conceded the chart showed a “rough relationship” but insisted workers’ difficulties forming unions under current law have played a key role in rising income inequality.

  “Rigorous research that digs in and really gets at causality does show that about a third of the increase in inequality between typical workers and workers at the high end over the last 40 years was due to the decline in unionization,” Shierholz said. “The whole rise in inequality is not due to unionization, but a big chunk of it [is].”

  Shierholz was one of four witnesses who testified before the HELP Committee on Thursday during a more than two-hour hearing on the PRO Act, which is pending in the Senate.

  …

  Shortly after Shierholz’s exchange with Cassidy, Sen. Robert Marshall, R-Kan., suggested declining membership has more to do with unions’ failings than gaps in labor law. Marshall asked Obama administration National Labor Relations Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce why the government should “restructure law in unions’ favor when unions are failing to make a compelling case?”

  Law360 July 23, 2021
• The Farm Workforce Modernization Act is back on the table. Who is it really for?

  “The AEWR exists for two main reasons: To prevent farm workers who are recruited from abroad from being underpaid relative to other farm workers in the region where they’re employed, [and] to prevent downward pressure on the wages of farm workers in the United States,” wrote Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a 2020 analysis of a proposal to lower H-2A wages. “Lowering the AEWR will put downward pressure on the wages of all farmworkers.”

  The Counter July 23, 2021
• For these young sisters, a period of family, love, and sacrifice

  Elise Gould: You think about two different students in the economy, one who has to work a job maybe 30, 40 hours a week. They need that money. Compare that with somebody who can devote their entire being to being a full time student.

  Laine Perfas: That’s Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, also in D.C.

  Gould: Those sacrifices have a cost on their ability to focus, their ability to be fully present in – in all of their activities.

  Christian Science Monitor July 23, 2021
• Biden on the worker shortage: Pay $15 an hour or ‘be in a bind for a little while’

  In June, leisure and hospitality wages surged even higher, a 7.1% increase from the year prior. But even those wages are not much higher than pre-pandemic levels, tweeted Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama administration economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. Those wages still remain lower than in other industries.

  …

  Shierholz previously told Insider that one solution for addressing the labor shortage could be simply raising the minimum wage, a policy proposal that the president backs, but that some Democrats have shot down.

  Business Insider July 23, 2021
• Minimum Wage Workers Earn 21 Percent Less Than Their Counterparts 12 Years Ago: Report

  A new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found the $7.25 minimum wage has lost roughly one-fifth of its value since July 2009, after adjusting for inflation.

  The value of minimum wage in 2009 would be equivalent to $9.17 per hour today. Minimum wage hit its peak in 1986, according to EPI, as it would be worth $11.12 in today’s dollars.

  …

  “That’s a really remarkable finding, that more than 50 years ago we paid the lowest wage workers in this economy substantially more than what we pay them today,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at EPI, told Newsweek.

  “Maybe the minimum wage hasn’t changed, but the cost of living has increased over that period,” Zipperer added. “It’s more expensive to pay rent, it’s more expensive to buy food and it’s more expensive to pay for healthcare.”

  …

  Zipperer noted the United States has the economic capacity to pay employees higher wages but has primarily only done so for those who are already at the top of the wage distribution.

  “But for a low-wage worker that essentially means that you can’t afford a decent standard of living,” he said.
  ​
  He added, “A single adult with no kids is going to need at least a $15 an hour job today in order to afford basic necessities like rent, food, transportation expenses and taxes.”

  Newsweek July 23, 2021
• ‘WE ALL QUIT’: How America’s Workers Are Taking Back Their Power

  Employment benefits have given workers a little more time and higher expectations to find better jobs. “Workers have seen during the pandemic that when lawmakers choose to step in and act and protect people [via stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, healthcare], work doesn’t have to suck as much. When workers are asked to do tough jobs, they want to be paid more,” David Cooper, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute said. “For the first time since the late 1990s, low wages workers have the leverage to demand higher pay. The workers who walk out of Burger King are using this to their advantage.”

  …

  While some professionals are quitting because of burnout or existential crises, according to a New York Times article about the phenomenon from April, low wage workers don’t have the savings or other financial cushion to leave the job market for extended periods of time to explore passion projects and travel, Cooper says.

  But people are finding better jobs in the same industries, or entirely new ones. Cooper says the expanded social safety net has left workers wanting and expecting more, and has allowed them to spend a little more time out of the workforce looking for the right job. “In general, unemployment benefits give workers the ability to wait for better jobs and better working conditions,” said Cooper. “They’re taking time to pick the right jobs. Those jobs might be closer to their interests, closer to what they studied, jobs that are a career rather than a means to pay the bills.”

  …

  “Flexibility to look for better jobs has been eroded intentionally through policy choices and campaigns to undermine workers’ leverage and ability to expect more from employers,” said Cooper.

  VICE July 23, 2021
• ‘My savings were gone’: millions who lost work during Covid faced benefit system chaos

  In the wake of the mass unemployment caused by the pandemic, several organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute and National Employment Law Project, created a report with unemployed workers outlining reforms needed to fix the widespread issues to unemployment insurance that were exposed by Covid-19.

  The Guardian July 23, 2021
• Hourly Workers Are Demanding Better Pay and Benefits—and Getting Them

  From 1979 to 2019, wages for the lowest-paid decile of workers rose 3.3% when adjusted for inflation, while wages for the top 5% of workers rose 63.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Over that time, as middle-class jobs were automated or sent overseas, and as more people vied for what was left in the wake of the 2001 and 2007–2009 recessions, employers had the upper hand. By one estimate, 53 million people—around 44% of U.S. workers— were low-wage before the pandemic, making an average of $10.22 an hour.

  …

  That’s the result of four decades of declining union power and a stagnant minimum wage. “The idea that any short-run shortages that do exist would undo 40 years of employers’ ability to suppress wages—it just does not ring true whatsoever,” says Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama Administration economist who works at the Economic Policy Institute.

  Time July 23, 2021
• Jamie Dimon’s $50 mln award is sane in a mad world

  Meanwhile, bosses of other companies will use Dimon’s riches to argue that the market price for their own talent has just gone up. Chief executive pay already grew 16% in 2020, the Economic Policy Institute found in May. America’s corporate elite continues to pull itself up by the bootstraps.

  Reuters July 23, 2021
• Woodstock votes yes on short-term rental moratorium

  Meanwhile, 2019 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank created to address the needs of low- and middle-income workers, recognized some economic benefits of Airbnbs but concluded that those benefits do not outweigh the costs to local jurisdictions in the form of tax revenue and potentially higher housing costs for local residents if enough properties for long-term housing were converted to short-term accommodations. The analysis also concluded that those benefiting from short-term rentals were disproportionately white and high-wealth households.

  Albany Times Union July 23, 2021
• Daybreak July 21: Lawmakers look at revising ag disaster program

  By the way: Farmworkers continued to make less in 2020 than workers with even minimal education, the Economic Policy Institute says in an analysis of wage data. Ag workers made $14.62 per hour on average, and H-2A workers made less — $13.68 per hour, writes EPI’s director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, Daniel Costa.

   

  Agri-Pulse July 23, 2021
• Low-Wage Workers Now Have Options, Which Could Mean a Raise

  Might this be just a flash in the pan? Heidi Shierholz, who was also a chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration and is now director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is skeptical that the job market is breaking with its decades-long trend of wage stagnation at the bottom and lavish rewards at the top.

  “How much of what this captures is just a trampoline effect?” she wondered. “The jobs that come back tend to look like the jobs that were lost.” After the dust settles and the employment holes created by the pandemic in several industries fill up, the deal offered to workers might look much like it did before the pandemic.

  Ultimately, “we are stuck in a world where labor is very cheap and we don’t expect much from it,” Ms. Stevenson said. “I don’t see this pandemic fundamentally reshaping that.” Ms. Shierholz put it this way: “There has not been any fundamental restructuring of power in the economy.”

  New York Times July 23, 2021