Media clips
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Last year, Uber claimed that drivers in cities like Denver and Washington, D.C., make $55,000 annually, however multiple independent studies disputed the figure. Economist Larry Mishel called the estimate “phony-baloney,” saying that it doesn’t account for out-of-pocket costs like gas and vehicle maintenance.
CBS Moneywatch July 23, 2021 -
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told Insider that ending benefits early is a “massive mistake” and doesn’t make any “economic sense.”
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“We still have a weak labor market,” Shierholz said. “People are depending on those benefits, and they’re injecting a ton of federal cash dollars into those states.”
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Some governors of the states that have cut the benefits early have cited labor shortages and are aiming to get workers back into the labor force, but Shierholz said labor shortages are isolated.
Business Insider July 23, 2021 -
According to a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 31.8% of private-sector businesses that responded to EPI’s survey (a total of 634 respondents were surveyed) reported that all of their employees had to sign a non-compete agreement, regardless of their job duties or compensation. And of the respondents that had an average wage of less than $13.00, 29% of them required all their workers to enter into non-compete agreements.
Forbes July 23, 2021 -
If adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage should have already exceeded $15, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The group has reported that the minimum wage would have been set at $21.69 in 2020 and $23.53 by 2025 if it kept pace with economic gains; instead, $7.25 is worth 30 per cent less than was 50 years ago.
The Independent July 23, 2021 -
Josh Bivens: The Fed’s reaction to inflation could be worse than inflation itself.
Mr. Bivens is the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Rising prices can certainly squeeze families’ budgets, all else equal. But recent inflation has been driven by price spikes in a small number of sectors, such as used cars, hotel rooms and airfares. Inflation driven by idiosyncratic sectoral shocks should not spur policymakers to stomp on the brakes.
The only inflation that should spur more contractionary macroeconomic policy is inflation that comes from the labor market, when jobs become so plentiful that workers can successfully demand wage growth that runs far ahead of the economy’s capacity to deliver it. This has not happened in the United States for a long time.
The New York Times July 23, 2021 -
“The minimum wage is far lower than it was at its peak over 50 years ago in 1968,” said economist Lawrence Mishel, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, which tracks minimum wage changes.
That’s even as the productivity and efficiency of workers has more than doubled, he said.
“The failure to increase the minimum wage has really undercut the wages of the bottom third of the work force,” Mishel said.…One problem with waiting to address low hourly wages is rising inflation, according to Mishel.
“Inflation has already undercut the minimum wage quite a lot,” he said.
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One argument against raising the hourly pay rate is that it could adversely businesses and employment. But there is little evidence to support those claims, Mishel said.
“There may be some firms that close, but others open up, too,” he said. “One can ask, if a firm can only survive with substandard wages, is that a good outcome?”
CNBC July 23, 2021 -
By every measure, persistent social and a history of injustices were laid bare in relation to Blacks and other minorities during the COVID-19 pandemic including disparities in health status, access to health care, employment, wages, housing, criminal justice and poverty. All of this left them more susceptible to the virus both economically and physically according to the Economic Policy Institute.
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COVID-19 did not discriminate but the institutional and systemic racial disparities over which the virus spread its funeral pall was ripe for its exploitation. (Courtesy Economic Policy Institute)
Black Voice News July 23, 2021 -
July 23, 2021
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
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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 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 -
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 -
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.
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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 -
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.
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“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.”
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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 -
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.”
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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.”
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“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 -
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 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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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.
July 23, 2021 -
“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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 21, 2021