The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group, predicts that if the minimum rises to $15, nearly one-third (31%) of African Americans and one-quarter (26%) of Latinos will receive a pay increase.
The Guardian
March 1, 2021
“There have been tons of workers in this pandemic who’ve been denied benefits because they’ve been offered a job that’s actually not safe,” Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Insider.
She added: “One of the key things this does is just makes it very clear that if you get offered a job that is not safe because of COVID risks, you can still get PUA. And I just think that that’s super meaningful.”
Business Insider
March 1, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to Barack Obama‘s secretary of labor, is a strong advocate for stimulus payments and believes their benefits are crucial for struggling Americans as well as the nation’s economic recovery—even if their full contributions to the economy take time to materialize. Shierholz was one of 120 economists who signed an open letter urging Congress to adopt Biden’s plan to deliver $1,400 checks last November.
“One thing that’s tricky is the stimulus payments have happened…in combination with increases in unemployment insurance and so it’s hard to untangle [the individual effects of each policy],” Shierholz told Newsweek. “It’s hard to separate the two, but those direct payments to people have had a big impact on the economy.” She referenced research conducted by organizations like the Urban Institute, which showed that last year’s stimulus payments and expanded unemployment insurance benefits prevented millions of people from entering poverty.
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Most people who would get the help are those who need it most. A new Economic Policy Institute study of employment last year put into numbers what everybody can see with their own eyes: When the bottom dropped out of the economy a year ago, the bottom dropped out most for people on the bottom.
More than one-quarter (27.1%) of the lowest-wage workers, those in the bottom quarter of income standings—some 7.885 million—lost their jobs to the pandemic and its economic impact, EPI reported. Before that, they made $14 an hour, or less. One-sixth, or 3.27 million people, in the second-lowest income group lost their jobs, too. But the story was different for the top half of the income scale. The middle-income group—the third-lowest—added 586,658 workers. The richest fourth added almost a million workers (980,955).
People’s World
March 1, 2021
A 2019 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute finds the federal minimum wage in 2019 had 17% less purchasing power than it did 10 years ago, and 31% less than the minimum wage in 1968.
Forbes
March 1, 2021
The federal minimum wage has not been increased by Congress since 2009. According to the pro-wage increase Economic Policy Institute, a national $15 wage would help a single, adult American earner without kids achieve a “modest, but adequate standard of living” in “all areas across the United States.”
Jamestown Sun
March 1, 2021
There’s also the matter of basic fairness. Since 2009, the minimum wage has increased by 0.0%. In that same time, CEO salaries have risen a whopping 105%. According to the Economic Policy Institute the average compensation for a top CEO in 2019 was $21.3 million. A year’s salary at the current minimum wage is $15,600. In other words, top wage earners make 1,400 times what they pay folks at the bottom.
Raising the minimum wage is affordable and the correct thing to do. Let’s hope Congress gets to it soon.
PennLive
March 1, 2021
Last month, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people in the U.S., released a fact sheet detailing the transformative potential of the Raise the Wage Act. According to EPI data, the wage increase would benefit nearly 32 million working people — or 21% of the entire U.S. workforce — resulting in an extra $3,300 in annual income on average per affected individual. Notably, 23% of those workers are either a Black or Latinx woman, and more than one in four (28%) have children.
Teen Vogue
March 1, 2021
While the demand for a $15 minimum wage has become a central plank in the progressive agenda over the last decade, it’s worth being clear about the scale of change it would actually bring about. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that raising the wage would benefit 32 million workers. Hundreds of thousands would be lifted out of poverty.
New Republic
March 1, 2021
“The real thing that I’m encouraged by is that the president was willing to go on the record about a specific organizing drive,” Celine McNicholas, the director of government affairs and labor counsel at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told me, noting that previous Democratic presidents generally tended to go on record “in terms of a broader right to organize.”
…
“I do think that Biden wants to be every bit as pro-union a president as he campaigned as,” McNicholas told me. Labor advocates were also pleased when he fired Peter Robb, the previous general counsel of the NLRB, because Robb was widely seen as a foe of labor organizing.
Washington Post
March 1, 2021
The pandemic has disproportionately affected the employment of Black and Hispanic workers. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in an analysis that Black workers are less likely to be in jobs that can be done remotely and more likely to be in jobs considered essential or in jobs that have experienced major job losses amid the pandemic.
Business Insider
March 1, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 29 states already have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum. A large portion of those states raise the amount automatically with inflation.
Who are these minimum-wage workers? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says they’re mostly young, and they are less likely to have more than a high school education. They are more likely to be working part-time than full-time. They are mostly female and mostly unmarried.
It’s really not all that surprising, I guess, that a U.S. senator like Thune might have trouble identifying with hundreds of thousands of workers earning minimum wage.
The Herald Bulletin
March 1, 2021
To determine the best place to retire in every state, 24/7 Wall St. created an index of 11 different health and economic factors using data from County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute joint program, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and the Economic Policy Institute.
24/7 Wall Street
March 1, 2021
A January report from the Economic Policy Institute found that an estimated 146,000 workers in the 12th district would receive wage increases if a $15 per hour minimum wage is passed by Congress and signed into law. Of those, 80,000 are women and 66,000 are Black. Twelfth District workers benefiting from the legislation would see an average annual wage increase of 18% or approximately $4,200 in 2020 dollars
Queen City Nerve
March 1, 2021
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, impacted workers would earn an additional $3,300 a year under a $15 minimum wage, and majority (59 percent) whose total family income is below the poverty line would receive an increase if the wage is raised in four years’ time. The hike would be particularly significant for workers of color and help to narrow the racial pay gap, the analysis also found.
The Progressive Pulse
March 1, 2021
Bringing manufacturing “back” to the United States has long been a politically popular idea. In 2012, Obama pledged during his reelection campaign to create 1 million new manufacturing jobs. Trump made similar promises in 2016.
Yet the United States has lost nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs overall since 1997, according to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
E and E News
March 1, 2021
The benefits of an increased federal minimum wage would be felt by a lot of Americans, she added. Affected workers would earn an extra $3,300 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Annual government expenditures on public assistance programs are also estimated to fall by as much as $31 billion. Jayapal added the groups to benefit the most would be minorities.
“Let’s not forget that out of the 27 million that are going to get a raise, 30 percent of Black workers would get a raise, 26 percent of Latino workers would get a raise, and 60 percent or more of women would get a raise.”
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Emma García, who specializes in education policy for the Economic Policy Institute, said her research indicates a need for more education and training for substitutes, not less.
“I understand that you may need to adapt your criteria to the emergency,” she said. “But the only way you can really help kids catch up is to focus on the quality of the instructors. Would you want to be vaccinated by an uncredentialed, unprepared nurse? I don’t think so.”
The Hechinger Report
March 1, 2021
This was the 49th straight week, the Economic Policy Institute points, out that such claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession.
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Earlier this month the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit progressive think tank, calculated that a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would save between $13.4 billion to $31 billion in major public assistance programs. EPI estimates the current minimum wage is worth 17 percent than it was a decade ago.
“More concretely, full-times workers at the federal minimum wage earn $6,800 less per year in real wages compared with their counterparts five decades ago,” EPI found. “This has happened even as labor productivity has essentially doubled over the last 50 years. The amount of good that can be produced (or services that can be provided) in an hour of work has grown to twice what it was, yet workers’ pay has not.”
Insider NJ
March 1, 2021
What is new is that other groups of workers such as nurses, gig workers and warehouse employees are being revered as critical during the pandemic while the stark inequalities and their vulnerable situations — such as unsafe working conditions, low pay and lack of access to health care — are being exposed, said Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs and labor counsel for the Economic Policy Institute.
“This is not a moment where these issues can be ignored,” she said.
CNN Business
March 1, 2021
In the report, Dave Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, explained that a higher minimum wage increases how much money families can spend, leading to overall increased consumer demand in those states. He said this may explain why states, where employees earn more in direct wages, are retaining business.
The Daily Californian
March 1, 2021
An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute published last week found that the Romney-Cotton proposal would only increase wages for 3.2 percent of workers by 2025. That’s significantly less than the Democrats’ Raise the Wage Act, which would see increased wages for just over 21 percent of workers. In different terms, the Democrats’ plan would give a raise to 32.2 million workers while the Republican senators’ proposal would provide a wage hike to less than 5 million workers.
Newsweek
March 1, 2021
Research by the Economic Policy Institute in April 2020 estimated that only half of potential unemployment applicants were actually receiving benefits, and as many as 12 million additional people could have filed for unemployment benefits had the process been easier.
Forbes
March 1, 2021
Dear Rep. Schrader,
Regarding your past and current refusal to support a $15/hr. national minimum wage, I would like to know your response to the following two questions that Thea Mei Lee, Economic Policy Institute President, asked at the outset of her Testimony before the Senate Budget Committee’s 2/25 hearing on “Why Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large, Profitable Corporations?”
(1) Why do large, profitable corporations pay such low wages that their employees are eligible for and must rely on federal anti-poverty programs just to make ends meet?
(2) What policies are necessary to address this problem?
https://www.epi.org/publication/our-deeply-broken-labor-market-needs-a-higher-minimum-wage-epi-testimony-for-the-senate-budget-committee/
Lincoln City Homepage
March 1, 2021
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average age of minimum-wage workers is 36; 89 percent are not teenagers; 28 percent have children, and 57 percent work full time, and on average they earn more than half of their families’ total income.
The New York Times
March 1, 2021
By boosting the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, 32 million US workers, or 21% of the workforce, would see their hourly wage lifted, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNET
March 1, 2021
We have been the last hired and the first fired, even when the economy was good. The Economic Policy Institute found that when the state unemployment rate was 3.5% in the third quarter of 2018, Black unemployment was at 5.4% while white unemployment was at 3.2%.
The Indianapolis Star
March 1, 2021