EPI’s top 3 posts so far in 2021

EPI readers remain focused on the work ahead

reaDER,   Since taking office in January, the Biden-Harris administration has taken some vital steps to support workers, everything from the American Rescue Plan to raises for nearly 400,000 federal contractors to calls for infrastructure investments, including investments in child care and higher education.    These steps all represent real progress for workers. However, as our EPI readers know, much of the critical work required to help all workers and their families flourish in an economy that works for everyone remains unfinished.     As we review the top 3 posts so far this year, what becomes clear is that EPI readers know there's a lot more to be done.   Readers like you are focused on the remaining policy agenda to build worker power, including passing the PRO Act to strengthen unions and collective bargaining rights, raising the minimum wage to provide more workers a living wage, and fixing loopholes in current U.S. labor regulations that are too often exploited by employers. EPI's top posts for the first six months of the year: Number Three: Why the U.S. needs a $15 minimum wage: How the Raise the Wage Act would benefit U.S. workers and their  families This fact sheet, produced in collaboration with the National Employment Law Project, breaks down how phasing in a $15 minimum wage by 2025 would generate $107 billion in higher pay, benefitting tens of millions of workers and helping to reverse decades of growing pay inequality.   Raising the minimum wage to $15 will be particularly significant for women—nearly six in 10 (59%) minimum wage workers are women—and workers of color—nearly one-third (31%) of African Americans and one-quarter (26%) of Latinos would get a raise. The fact sheet also dispels common myths, i.e. that the only workers who need a $15 minimum wage live on the coasts. In rural Missouri, a single adult without children will need $39,800 (more than $19 per hour for a full-time worker) by 2025 to cover typical rent, food, transportation, and other basic living costs. Number Two: The H-1B visa program remains the "outsourcing visa": More than half of the top 30 H-1B employers were outsourcing firms The H-1B temporary work visa program, which allows U.S. employers to hire college-educated migrant workers, is not operating as intended and needs to be fixed: Instead of being used to fill genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting U.S. labor standards, the latest data show that the H-1B's biggest users are companies that have an outsourcing business model. Of the top 30 H-1B employers, 17 of them were outsourcing firms. President Biden can and should implement regulations so that outsourcing companies can no longer exploit the program and to prevent them from underpaying skilled migrant workers. Number One:   Union workers had more job security during the pandemic, but unionization remains historically low: Data on union representation in 2020 reinforce the need for dismantling barriers to union organizing Recent data on unionization from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in 2020, 15.9 million workers in the United States were represented by a union, a decline of 444,000 from 2019. However, while unionization levels dropped in 2020, unionization rates rose because union workers have seen less job loss than non-union workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you for continuing to be an active reader and helping EPI by sharing our research and resources with your network. We appreciate everything you do for our collective movement. Eve Tahmincioglu Director of Communications, Economic Policy Institute At EPI, we produce a wide range of resources supporting our mission to give voice to the economic concerns of working Americans. While all these projects are truly a labor of love, they require significant time and resources to produce. We appreciate any donations in support of this work. Thank you for your support. DONATE Facebook Twitter epi.org View this email in your browser | Unsubscribe from this list