In 34 states and DC, young workers face pay discrimination under federal and state laws, allowing employers to pay them less than adults in the same roles. This includes exclusion from minimum wage protections covering most adult workers. epi.org/blog/youth-sub… For example, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, workers under 20 can be paid as little as $4.25/hr for their first 3 months of work. Other types of workers who can be paid subminimum wages include baybsitters, seasonal workers at amusement parkers and newspaper carriers.

Florida is set to roll back over 100 years of child labor protections with a proposed bill that would allow 16-17-year-olds unlimited work hours, even on school nights. go.epi.org/child-labor-fl Since 1913, Florida's child labor laws have combated youth exploitation in hazardous jobs. Current rules limit 16-17-year-olds to 8 hours on school days and 30 hours weekly. The new bill seeks to overturn these protections.

“We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.” Six decades since #MLK’s March on Washington speech, barriers still remain to full equitable integration of Black Americans in the US economy.
https://t.co/kgZ6lqF4OWepi.org/publication/ch…
The wealth gap between Black and white families is a long-standing vestige of centuries of government policies EXPLICITLY denying African Americans the opportunity to build wealth.
epi.org/publication/ch…

Companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart are waging increasingly aggressive campaigns to erode long-standing labor rights by misclassifying their employees.

And these attacks are spreading beyond ride-hailing jobs. Is your job next? epi.org/publication/st… Digital platform companies like Uber and Lyft are misclassifying workers as “independent contractors” and deny them fundamental labor rights in their state-by-state agenda.

NEW: Major strikes among U.S. workers jumped 50% to 120,600 in 2022.

The increase is still a decline from pre-pandemic levels; but government data on work stoppages is limited. epi.org/publication/20…

🧵In a recent interview with @POLITICOPro, @EdWorkforceCmte chair @virginiafoxx claimed that unions aren’t gaining membership outside of the public sector. The facts say otherwise. Last year, more than 16 million US workers were represented by a union, an increase of more than 200,000 from 2021. A majority of those were private sector workers.

Wage growth has slowed, and home prices and rental prices show signs of easing—all reasons the Fed should NOT raise interest rates at their meeting this week and focus on keeping the economic recovery going strong. epi.org/blog/the-fed-s… Raising interest rates further to fight inflation will pose a threat to economic growth. 2023 has the potential to be a year of economic prosperity, but only if the Fed stops jamming on the brakes.

LIVE NOW! @BrishenRogers, @LarryMishel, @snaidunl and UC Davis Professor Angela Harris discuss how we can combat unequal power in the workplace.

Tune in below: Workers are often assumed to have equal bargaining power with employers, even when they don’t. Later, as soon as they start to make gains, they are assumed to have too much bargaining power, @BrishenRogers explains.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to equity. Today, we released a new series of essays and interactive chartbook offering perspectives on advancing anti-racist economic research and policy.

Learn more: epi.org/anti-racist-po… Race-neutral policies are harmful for achieving true racial equity and justice, writes @AdewaleMaye. We must acknowledge and tackle the barriers posed by systemic racism with race-conscious policies that target the intersection of race, class, and gender. epi.org/anti-racist-po…

🧵 The reasons for escalating inflation are hotly debated, but some theories gaining traction have not been grounded in the data. Our research sets the record straight on the causes of inflation—and debunks 5 top inflation myths. epi.org/blog/debunking… Myth #1: Workers’ wage growth is driving inflation.

In fact, nominal wage growth—while faster relative to the recent past—has lagged far behind inflation, meaning that labor costs have been dampening, not amplifying, inflationary pressures all along. epi.org/blog/wage-grow…

NEW: State corporate income tax revenues have eroded sharply in recent decades. And in seven states, more than 60% of corporations pay no state corporate income tax.

State lawmakers must ensure corporations pay their fair share in taxes. Read our report: epi.org/publication/re… The erosion of state corporate income tax revenue has resulted in a revenue shortfall between $43 billion and $57 billion.

With that revenue, state and local governments could have essentially fully funded universal high-quality pre-K. epi.org/publication/re…

Unions are not only good for workers, they’re good for communities and for democracy. Our new report documents how high unionization levels are associated with greater economic, personal, and democratic well-being. epi.org/publication/un… We divided the 50 U.S. states, plus the District of Columbia, into three groups based on their level of union density.

NEW: Wage inequality continued to soar in 2020. Wages for the top 0.1% skyrocketed 389% since 1979, while wages for the bottom 90% grew just 28%.

Learn more: epi.org/blog/wage-ineq… Over the past four decades, wages for the bottom 90% have been redistributed upwards.

The top 1.0% earned 13.8% of all wages in 2020.

The bottom 90% received just 60.2% of all wages in 2020, the lowest share since data began in 1937.

Latina workers remain greatly underpaid, including in front-line occupations.

Latina workers make between 6% to 32% less than non-Hispanic white men in jobs at the center of national efforts to address COVID-19. #LatinaEqualPayDay
epi.org/blog/latina-eq… Across these occupations, the pay disparities are largest among physicians and surgeons: Latina doctors are paid 68% of the average hourly wage of white male doctors (a difference of $20.46 per hour). #LatinaEqualPayDay

25 states cutting pandemic programs are weakening their own recoveries. Recipients of benefits in these states are expected to lose $22 billion in aid, & as a consequence states will be foregoing an enormous amount of economic activity, writes @hshierholz nytimes.com/2021/06/06/opi… If employers in need of workers can’t attract them, they'll raise wages to hire them away from other employers, who will raise wages to retain their workers, & so on. When those measures don’t result in substantial increase in workers, that’s a labor shortage, writes @hshierholz.

Happening now! Watch the livestream here: epi.org/event/prosecut…

https://twitter.com/EconomicPolicy/status/1394329654530494468

There's a growing number of district attorneys and state AGs prosecuting cases against employers for crimes like wage theft and workplace safety violations, says our moderator @TerriGerstein. More should join the effort.

Read our new report to learn more: epi.org/publication/fi…

Historically, wage theft and other crimes against workers have not been prosecuted. But state and local prosecutors are increasingly fighting workplace abuses, and more should join the effort.

Read our new report by @TerriGerstein & @LWPHarvard: epi.org/publication/fi… This development is important in light of the limited options for enforcing workers’ rights—as a result of the underfunding of labor enforcement agencies—and employers’ increasing use of forced arbitration clauses, which prevent workers from suing in court.

Nonlicensed school staff receive low pay and no employment during the summer months. Illinois is supporting these vital workers by offering unemployment benefits during the summer. Minnesota—which is considering a similar bill—should follow suit. epi.org/blog/illinois-… Workers in the most common nonlicensed education occupations—like janitors and bus drivers—are paid less than the typical U.S. worker, whose median wage is $19.38/hour nationally.

The American Rescue Plan is highly unlikely to lead to any durable uptick in inflation or interest rates—the normal indicators of economic “overheating”—and it would be a sign of its success if it did. epi.org/blog/the-u-s-e… The U.S. economy has run far “too cold” for decades, largely due to the enormous rise in income inequality redistributing income to richer households that save most of their income. Unless inequality is substantially reversed, economic overheating is highly unlikely.

Recent economic data suggest labor shortages in leisure and hospitality have popped up—but there is little reason to worry about spillover into the rest of the economy and no reason to rein in stimulus or unemployment benefits. epi.org/blog/restauran… The leisure and hospitality labor market is highly segmented off from other sectors, and wage pressures—upward or downward—have typically not spilled over from it to other sectors. For example, jobs in leisure and hospitality have notably low wages and fewer hours.

The skills explanation offered both administrations “an excuse for what was a systematic deploying of policy to disempower workers,” argues @LarryMishel, a senior fellow at EPI who previously served as its president. theatlantic.com/politics/archi… “To Mishel & like-minded critics, the skills-gap theory couldn’t account for two key trends: the rising share of income & wealth concentrating in the top 1%, and the slowdown in wage growth even among college graduates, who were supposed to benefit from the digital revolution.”