Economic Policy Institute

05/27/2026

Misclassification of workers as independent contractors is a pervasive and widespread problem. A new EPI analysis finds that smaller, less economically secure groups of AAPI workers are often most exposed to the costs of misclassification.

In March, EPI published updated research highlighting the cost to workers of being misclassified as an independent contractor for 11 commonly misclassified occupations. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers were overrepresented in three of those occupations—manicurists and pedicurists...

05/27/2026

Young college 🎓 graduates are more likely to work in AI-exposed occupations than the overall workforce—and are considerably more likely to than young noncollege workers.
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BOTH young college graduates and young noncollege workers have experienced rising unemployment over the past 3 years, suggesting AI is not likely to be driving labor market weakness.
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Read more at our link-in-bio.

05/21/2026

Young college 🎓 graduates are more likely to work in AI-exposed occupations than the overall workforce—and are considerably more likely to than young noncollege workers.
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BOTH young college graduates and young noncollege workers have experienced rising unemployment over the past three years, suggesting AI is not likely to be driving labor market weakness.
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Read more at our link-in-bio.

05/21/2026

How high could policymakers set a national minimum wage?

Our new report proposes tying the federal minimum wage to two-thirds of the national median wage—equivalent to roughly $17.70 today and a projected $20 in 2030.

This is an evidence-backed benchmark that would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers without the job losses critics typically predict.

Key takeaways: The federal minimum wage is at its lowest real value in 77 years. Frozen at $7.25 since 2009, the federal minimum wage has lost 30% of its purchasing power during this 17-year freeze. Setting the federal minimum wage at two-thirds of the national median wage would raise pay for 39.6 m...

05/20/2026

🚨 NEW: U.S. employers spend roughly $1.7 billion a year on union avoidance consultants and law firms to keep their workers from organizing and bargaining for better pay and working conditions, according to our new report with LaborLab.

While research shows many nonunion workers want to join a union, U.S. labor law allows employers to derail workers’ unionization efforts with impunity. 😡

Key takeaways Many U.S. employers hire union avoidance consultants to keep their workers from organizing and bargaining for better pay and working conditions. We estimate that employers spend roughly $1.7 billion a year on union avoidance consultants and law firms for this purpose, which has an unde...

05/20/2026

The depressed overall hires rate is a key driver of new labor market weakness for young college graduates.

This is true across industries, not just in those that disproportionately employ young college graduates—suggesting the culprit is not a structural change in the economy like AI but a labor market in which employers are hiring less and workers are holding onto the jobs they have.

The early 2020s labor market for young college graduates was strong. But, as we showed in this series’ first blog post, the Class of 2026 is graduating college into a labor market that has notably weakened in the past two years. A growing share of young college graduates are looking for jobs, but ...

05/18/2026

White elites have used many tactics to suppress Black political power—voter suppression, redistricting/gerrymandering, felon disenfranchisement, local preemption, and outright violence.

Learn more about these tactics, their history, and their relevance today.

Summary: From the abolition of slavery until now, Southern white elites have used a slew of tactics to suppress Black political power and secure their economic interests—including violence, voter suppression, gerrymandering, felony disenfranchisement, and local preemption laws. Black voter disenfr...

05/15/2026

Typical families have faced an affordability crunch in recent decades not because prices have grown exceptionally fast, but because incomes for the vast majority have grown too slowly.

🤔 Why? Because intentional policy choices have redistributed income to the very top.

👉 Raising wages + reducing inequality are the key to improving affordability. 👈

Affordability has been the policy buzzword of recent years. Much of the affordability discourse—both among policymakers and the public—has focused near-exclusively on prices as the big affordability problem. But affordability is not a problem of high prices, instead it’s the outcome of a race ...

05/15/2026

How we tax matters for building trust in the public sector.

With so much wealth and income concentrated at the very top, a necessary step is shifting more of the tax burden toward extremely high earners. This will generate more revenue to improve public services and infrastructure, while reducing inequality.

Taxes are the price of living well in a modern democratic community. The social contract relies on the idea that people both benefit from and contribute to maintaining a community in the ways they can; the tax code is one way of making sure that happens. Public trust builds under certain conditions:...

05/13/2026

For the second year in a row, Colorado and Virginia state legislators have passed landmark legislation to remove barriers to unionization.

But both pieces of legislation remain in limbo, awaiting governors’ signatures.

Governors Polis and Spanberger should seize these historic opportunities to rebalance unequal power in their states’ economies.

At a moment of relentless Trump administration attacks on workers and their unions, state lawmakers across the country are taking action to shore up workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain. Yet two of this year’s biggest opportunities for states to remove obstacles to unionization r...

05/13/2026

How high could policymakers set a national minimum wage?

In partnership with Roosevelt Institute, we invite you to join this webinar that shares a new, evidence-backed framework for raising the federal minimum wage.

Experts will explore the economic and human costs of a frozen wage floor, the original intent of the federal minimum wage, with context from Oklahoma Policy Institute on efforts to raise minimum wages in Oklahoma.

Register now 👉 https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2117781634940/WN_Dq-o9buMSAqG4a6mEAMbJA