Wages, Labor Standards, and Job Quality

Every American who wants to work should be able to get a good paying job. When stable employment is available to all, it improves the welfare of the country not only because more people are working, but because at full employment, employers have to compete for personnel, raising wages for workers more broadly. Moreover, workers of color and those without four-year college degrees—who have substantially higher unemployment—gain the most when the economy approaches genuine full employment. To make employers genuinely value their low- and middle-wage workers—no matter where they live or what credentials they hold—lawmakers must pursue policies that make more jobs available, and reduce barriers to employment.

EARN groups develop and advocate for policies that will create good jobs, such as investments in infrastructure and responsible economic development programs, tailoring programs target underserved communities and areas of high unemployment. They also work to reduce barriers to employment by supporting workforce development programs with good labor standards, sector partnerships, and policies such as ban-the-box that help formerly incarcerated individuals rejoin the workforce. Lastly, EARN groups’ work to strengthen state unemployment insurance programs, so that unemployed workers have support when looking for a new job.

The vast majority of American households’ income comes from what workers receive in their paychecks – which is why wages are so important. Unfortunately, wages for most workers grew exceptionally slowly between 1979 and 2012, despite productivity—which essentially measures the economy’s potential for providing rising living standards for all—rising 64 percent. In other words, most Americans, even those with college degrees, have only been treading water—despite working more productively (and being better educated) than ever.

EARN groups provide key research and policy analysis describing how these trends have played out at the state and local levels, and what policymakers can do about it.

Job Training and Apprenticeships

Meaningful training that leads to improved skills and higher pay costs money. Read More.

Enforcement

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Wage Theft

Wage theft, the practice of employers failing to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled, is a widespread and deep-rooted problem that directly harms millions of U.S. workers each year. Read More.

Minimum Wage

The minimum wage is a critical labor standard meant to ensure a fair wage for even the lowest paid workers. EARN groups have provided research and policy guidance for minimum wage laws passed in of states, cities, and counties across the country. Read more.

Overtime

Overtime pay rules ensure that most workers who put in more than 40 hours a week get paid 1.5 times their regular pay for the extra hours they work. Almost all hourly workers are automatically eligible for overtime pay, but salaried workers are only automatically eligible for overtime pay if they make below a certain salary threshold, and that threshold has been so eroded by inflation that dramatically fewer workers qualify today than they did in 1975. Read More.

Worker Misclassification

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Paid Sick, Family, and Medical Leave

Paid family leave and paid sick leave enable workers to take time off for the arrival of a child, or a serious health condition affecting themselves or a relative, without forcing them to choose between work and family.

There is no federal law that ensures all workers are able to earn paid sick days in the United States. EARN groups are working to enact state and local laws to ensure workers can take time off when they are sick. Read more.

Unemployment Insurance

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Work Hours and Fair Scheduling

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Publications

Raising the State Minimum Wage

Raising the minimum wage is an effective strategy for reducing poverty in New Mexico, particularly given the erosion of its purchasing power since it was last raised in 2009. In the legislative session that begins in January 2017, New Mexico lawmakers should enact legislation to raise the minimum wage to $12.50 per hour by 2021, if not sooner. This would establish a minimum wage that is roughly 60 percent of the state’s median wage. While this level for the minimum wage could not be considered a living wage, thousands of families would benefit—as would the state’s economy as that money was spent at local businesses.

In recent years the cities of Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces have acted to raise the minimum wage in their communities above that of the state. If the state raised the state’s minimum wage to $12.50 an hour by 2021 in the upcoming state legislative session, it would be the first minimum wage increase for the whole state since the present minimum wage of $7.50 took effect in January of 2009. This report assumes an increase in five $1.00 increments, from $7.50 to $8.50 an hour in 2017 and to $9.50 an hour in 2018 and so forth, up to $12.50 an hour by 2021. In 2017, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), there will be about 795,000 workers statewide making an hourly wage in New Mexico, rising to 825,000 in 2021. The EPI estimates that in 2021, 225,500 (or 27 percent) of those 825,000 workers would be directly helped by raising the minimum to $12.50 an hour. An additional 22,900 workers would be indirectly affected—their wages would rise due to ‘spillover effects’ from raising the wage to $12.50. The total number of workers affected would be 248,400 or about 30 percent of the 825,000 hourly workers. This report describes the characteristics of these low-wage workers and looks at the EPI’s estimates of the wage impacts of raising the state’s minimum wage.

State of Working West Virginia 2016

A persistent question for those who pondered West Virginia’s fate is a simple: why, in a state rich in natural resources, are West Virginians so poor? For more than a century several explanations have been developed by natives and interested “outsiders.” Read the full report.

This report, the ninth annual investigation of The State of Working West Virginia, comes at one of those times when national attention has been drawn to the state in the wake of the 2016 elections. In an even more unusual twist, much national discussion has focused around the conditions of our working class, an example of which is the surprise success of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Cu lture in Crisis. This analysis is an effort to cut through often overheated rhetoric and look at the available data and at historical trends.

Paid Family & Medical Leave: Policy Analysis and Recommendations for Indiana

Policies that provide paid time off to care for family members or recover from a serious medical event offer a host of benefits to workers; their newborn, newly adopted, or fostered children; and the ill spouses, aging parents, or military family members for whom they care.

But can paid family and medical leave be good for businesses, too? Compelling new evidence suggests that it can, and now is an ideal time for Indiana to craft paid family and medical leave legislation that will enable employees to access these benefits without overburdening their employers.
This publication will:
• outline the case for paid family and medical leave, including the potential benefits of expanded access
to paid leave for Hoosier families, businesses and the economy
• describe what is currently available in Indiana and in other states
• make recommendations for state policy

State of Working Vermont 2016

Pundits and historians will wrestle with the meaning of the 2016 elections for years. But from Bernie Sanders supporters on the left to Donald Trump backers on the right, voters sent one common
message: They are frustrated with an economy that has left them behind and elected officials who seem indifferent to their plight. People feel anxious and insecure: With few opportunities to get ahead, ordinary middle-class goals such as sending a kid to college or retiring seem permanently out of reach. What resonated with voters were the candidates’ vows to take action on behalf of
the millions who felt ignored. Here in Vermont people face many of the same problems they did last year, the year before, and the decade before that. A few encouraging things happened in 2015: Incomes rose across all levels, and Vermont’s poverty rate dropped. But these signs come from just one year of U.S. Census data; it’s too soon to know if they represent the beginning of a trend.