The labor market recovery from the pandemic recession has been tremendous and low-wage workers have been key recipients of those gains, with dramatically fast real wage growth between 2019 and 2023 as we found in our recent report. These gains were due in part to several large spending bills passed during the pandemic—including the vital American Rescue Plan—which provided relief to workers and their families to help them weather the recession and fed the surge in employment. After losing their jobs in record numbers during the initial shock of the pandemic, low-wage workers found better job o ..read more

U.S. employers have tremendous power over worker conduct. Under federal law, employers can require workers to attend “captive audience” meetings—and force employees to listen to political, religious, or anti-union employer views—on work time. Fortunately, a growing number of states are now seeking to address the threat of political and religious coercion in the workplace. This month, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee signed the Employee Free Choice Act into law, making Washington the seventh state to protect workers’ rights to opt out of captive audience meetings. The Illinois legislature i ..read more

Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 303,000 jobs added in March. Read the full thread here.    Strong #jobsreport out this morning with great news from both #BLS surveys. Payroll survey shows 303,000 jobs added in March along with normalizing nominal wage growth. The household survey finds mild improvements in the unemployment rate as participation and employment rise. pic.twitter.com/d9s8Rjg9gy — Elise Gould (@eliselgould) April 5, 2024 While both surveys are telling a similar story of a strong labor m ..read more

This piece was published in collaboration with the Albert Shanker Institute. For some students and workers, hair is a trivial wardrobe decision, while for many Black and Brown people, their hairstyle can be a consequential element of class participation and a job offer. School dress codes and “business appropriate” dress often put high stakes and severe restrictions on how Black and Brown people can express their culture and identity through their hair. Over the last several years, lawmakers in 24 states have sought to combat this problem by passing the “Creating a Respectful and Open Wor ..read more

This piece was originally published in Democracy Journal.  In the decades following World War II, the U.S. economy thrived. Economic growth was strong and the fruits of that growth were broadly shared. Not everything in the economy was perfect in the 1950s and ’60s—far from it. There were massive inequities by race and gender, marked by the exclusion of people of color and women from countless labor market opportunities. Nevertheless, a crucial dynamic was in place: As the economy grew, workers all across the wage distribution—low-wage, middle-wage, and high-wage—saw gains. Racial and gen ..read more

This is an excerpt from an op-ed that originally published in CNN. Read the full op-ed here. The federal estate tax should be an effective tool to slightly level the playing field between those who inherit wealth and those who have to work for a living. It should also ensure that family dynasties who’ve amassed enormous fortunes pay their fair share in taxes. But because policymakers have repeatedly doubled and tripled the immense sums that can be passed on before the tax kicks in, the estate tax today affects almost no one. The estate tax exemption—the value of an estate that a ..read more

March 12 is Equal Pay Day, a reminder that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country. The date represents how far into 2024 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2023 simply to match what men were paid in 2023. Women were paid 21.8% less on average than men in 2023, after controlling for race and ethnicity, education, age, and geographic division.  There has been little progress in narrowing this gender wage gap over the past three decades, as shown in Figure A. While the pay gap declined between 1979 and 1994—due to men’s stagnant wag ..read more

Workers want unions now more than they have in a generation. Evidence suggests more than 60 million non-union workers would like a union at their workplace. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—the agency established by Congress in 1935 to protect workers’ organizing rights—is handling more union representation elections and unfair labor practice charges than they have in years. So how have companies responded to this surge in worker organizing? Some have honored their workers’ choice and tried to start a positive labor-management relationship, as Microsoft, New Flyer, Ben & Jerry’s ..read more

Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for January. Read the full thread here. Today’s JOLTS report reflects the revisions that were made to the CES employment data in their annual benchmarking process. According to their comparison tables found in the report (see https://t.co/dXEZgZoGFw), revised rates were little changed from the original data reported. — Elise Gould (@eliselgould) March 6, 2024 As with the hires rate, the quits rate ticked down a bit. The fast churn in the immediate aftermath of ..read more

The immigrant share of the labor force reached a record high of 18.6% in 2023, according to our analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.1 Anti-immigration advocates have been out in full force, using this as a talking point for deeply misguided commentary and analysis that roughly translates to “immigrants are taking all our jobs.”  The reality is that the economy does not have a fixed number of jobs, and what we see today is a growing economy that is adding jobs for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers. Here are six key facts that show immigr ..read more