Even before the pandemic, many providers struggled to meet basic needs. Child care workers make, on average, less than $14 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute, far less than they can earn working at Target, Starbucks or in many fast food restaurants. Workers also tend to lack benefits like health insurance, family leave and paid sick leave
The Hechinger Report
November 5, 2021
As a result, providers often end up passing costs along to parents via higher tuition rates, risking pricing out all but the highest earners. By the time the pandemic hit, the average cost of child care for toddlers had topped $8,500 a year in Arizona, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while infant care averaged nearly $11,000 annually. That’s more than base tuition at an in-state college.
Arizona Public Media
November 5, 2021
Julia Wolfe, Janelle Jones, and David Cooper, “‘Fair workweek’ laws help more than 1.8 million workers” (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2018), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/fair-workweek-laws-help-more-than-1-8-million-workers/. David Cooper and Lawrence Mishel, “Calls to establish a regionally adjusted federal minimum wage are dangerously misguided,” Economic Policy Institute, April 5, 2021, available at https://www.epi.org/blog/calls-to-establish-a-regionally-adjusted-federal-minimum-wage-are-dangerously-misguided/.
Center for American Progress
November 5, 2021
MAX B. SAWICKY is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He has worked at the Economic Policy Institute and the Government Accountability Office, and has written for numerous progressive outlets.
In These Times
November 5, 2021
Features Josh discussing the debt ceiling.
WPFW
November 5, 2021
The state minimum wage currently ranges between $13 to $14 in California, second only to Washington DC’s $15.20, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 since 2009, but some states have chosen to set their own rates.
Business Insider
November 5, 2021
Before Covid, meat processors struggled to meet their labor needs, which increased the hiring of immigrant workers mostly from Mexico. More than a third of the workforce was foreign born, according to a 2020 report by the Economic Policy Institute. That hurt the industry when the Trump administration curtailed immigration.
Bloomberg.com
November 5, 2021
“Timeliness is everything when it comes to the mail,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. The Economic Policy Institute is a left-leaning nonprofit that specializes in economic fairness issues.
Who. What. Why
November 5, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, that $7.25 was worth 14.8% less in 2018 than in 2009 and close to 30% less than in 1968. This has led many to infer that another minimum wage raise is well overdue.
All Work
November 5, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, contends that the original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better (BBB) plan would have created 4 million new jobs per year. By comparison, the Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank, estimates it would reduce economic output by nearly one percent over ten years and eliminate about 300,000 jobs due to the added tax burden involved and lessened incentives for people to work.
Forbes
November 5, 2021
“This cost of losses on the student loan portfolio held by the federal government would by definition rise a lot with full forgiveness,” Josh Bivens, director of research at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said in an email.
The USA Today
November 5, 2021
“When we look at what’s happening in the labor market, I think we’re dealing in unprecedented times,” said Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute, who added there’s a reason it’s hard to predict right now.
Marketplace
November 5, 2021
And after graduation, Black borrowers are “navigating labor markets, where they’re increasingly facing discrimination that then requires them to have to return back to higher education because they believe a graduate degree will help them be a buffer against some of that labor market discrimination,” he tells CNBC Make It. According to the Economic Policy Institute, even Black workers with an advanced degree experience a significant wage gap compared with their white counterparts, with Black workers being paid 14.9% less than white workers.
CNBC
November 5, 2021
But people’s feelings about their jobs and the outlook for the economy haven’t broken up; they’re just taking a break. Those two sentiments are intertwined, per Adam Hersh at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
November 5, 2021
With the news last week that the Biden Administration’s historic paid leave proposals have been stripped from the reconciliation package, pressure is on the Administration to use other avenues to improve work-life balance for struggling families. A key first step should be restoring the 40-hour work week by ordering the Labor Department to issue much stronger regulations that bring back overtime pay coverage for the majority of the salaried workforce that used to be protected.
Democracy Journal
November 5, 2021
In places like Salinas, where agriculture is a major industry, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,967. The average annual salary for a full-time farm worker in California is $30,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Daily Californian
November 5, 2021
But the Biden administration has been slow to undo the trade policies of his predecessor because the tariffs have support in the politically vital state of Pennsylvania. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said the tariffs created more than 3,000 steelmaking jobs and Raimondo said they kept workers employed, the Post reports.
UPI
November 5, 2021
In the electorally crucial state of Pennsylvania, for instance, the administration faces strong political pressure to maintain the tariffs on behalf of state steelworkers. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank, found that the tariffs created more than 3,000 steelmaking jobs. Raimondo this month said the tariffs “helped save American jobs in the steel and aluminum industries.”
Washington Post
November 5, 2021
“There’s a lot of momentum right now, but there are some very serious obstacles toward workers actually acquiring sustained levels of power,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, noting that under 11 percent of American workers are represented by unions.
The New York Times
November 5, 2021
Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She’s the co-author of “Rescuing Retirement” and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg Quint
November 5, 2021
Join us for this virtual, multi-library event with author Richard Rothstein, Distinguished Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Patch.com
November 5, 2021
The average CEO at the nation’s 350 largest public companies was paid about 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, or about $24.2 million on average. The ratio ticked up from a 307:1 ratio in 2019 and a 61:1 ratio in 1989.
Providence Journal
November 5, 2021
But looking at the bigger picture over the last few months shows bargaining power for workers may not last. Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, tweeted that “slower job growth in the delta-period has been accompanied by slower wage growth in most industries,” with wages growing faster between May and July than they have between August and October.
Business Insider
November 5, 2021
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, says his preferred measure of how much Americans are earning is the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s wage growth tracker, which suggests that worker wages increased by 4.2% in September — strong growth, but not enough to keep up with inflation.
CNBC
November 5, 2021
“The pandemic recession disproportionately impacted certain groups,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “The recovery has yet to reach some of those groups that were hardest hit.”
CNBC
November 5, 2021
Once Black women graduate, they can face labor market discrimination that limits how much they earn. A Black woman with a bachelor’s degree was paid $27.76 an hour on average in 2020, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s State of Working America Data Library, compared to $44.37 for a white man and $32.02 for a white woman. Black women with advanced degrees were paid $37.55 an hour — nearly $7 less than white men with only a bachelor’s degree.
MarketWatch
November 5, 2021
This, even though, as the Economic Policy Institute pointed out, “Compared with other women in the United States, Black women have always had the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home.” In fact, working-class white people have benefited most from assistance from the government.
The New York Times
November 5, 2021
“Child care costs constitute a large portion of the income families need in order to achieve a modest yet adequate standard of living—and are particularly onerous for workers paid the minimum wage,” according to research from the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI. “High-quality child care is out of reach for working families.”
NBC News
November 5, 2021
“It was pretty fast wage growth. It was one data point, but we’ll keep an eye on it,” said Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute.
But if employers keep raising wages this much, they could be driven to raise prices, too.
“That sort of wage-price spiral is what worries kind of macro policymakers the most. That’s the genie they don’t want to let out of the bottle,” he said.
NPR Marketplace
November 5, 2021