In 2023, workers across the country—from Hollywood writers to autoworkers, nurses, and Starbucks baristas—went on strike to improve their working conditions. Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist

Ask An Expert: What is the state of racial equity 60 years after the March on Washington?

Aug 25th, 2023 13m

Sixty years later, policymakers have failed to meet the economic demands of the March on Washington. Policy analyst Adewale A. Maye discusses new Economic Policy Institute research finding that post-civil rights era legislation has largely fail

Ask An Expert: Why have the lowest-paid workers seen historic wage growth?

Jul 11th, 2023 6m 6s

Economist Elise Gould discusses surprising new Economic Policy Institute research showing that the lowest-paid U.S. workers saw historic wage growth between 2019 and 2022, even after accounting for high inflation.__Follow EPI on Twitter: ht

The Black Agenda

Mar 16th, 2022 38m 58s

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman discusses her new book, The Black Agenda.__Follow EPI on Twitter: https://twitter.com/EconomicPolicy__The State of Working America Podcast is part of EPI’s effort to raise workers’ voices to ensure they are heard in

Democracy, Race, and Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Sadie T. M. Alexander

Aug 3rd, 2021 47m 49s

Nina Banks discusses her new book "Democracy, Race, and Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Sadie T. M. Alexander." Banks, an economist, talks about her journey to unearth the economic insights of the first Black economist, Alexander, who was

The Whiteness of Wealth

Jun 8th, 2021 32m 30s

Dorothy A. Brown discusses her new book, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It. Brown, a law professor and expert in tax policy, provides a cross-disciplinary analysis exposing the racism

Fact-checking the labor shortage hype

Jun 3rd, 2021 25m 16s

Heidi Shierholz and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute fact-check current hype around the idea that a labor shortage is holding back U.S. businesses. Heidi and Josh explain that what we are experiencing is just the opposite of a labor

Millennials Energize the U.S. Labor Movement

Jan 14th, 2020 39m 1s

Hosts Pedro da Costa and Rami Jackson talk to Kayla Blado, President of the Nonprofit Employee and Media Relations Director at EPI, and bargaining chair at The Democracy Collaborative union, Katie Parker, about millennial activism, new sources

America's Labor Revival

Jan 7th, 2020 33m 39s

As workers around the country both union and nonunion ramp up their activism, Steven Greenhouse, author of Beaten Down, Worked Up and a long-time New York Times labor reporter, chronicles the recent labor revival.__Follow EPI on Twitter: http

‘Curb Cut-Outs’: How Black America’s Struggles Bolster U.S. Democracy

Dec 17th, 2019 23m 53s

Tanya Wallace-Gobern, director of the National Black Worker Center Project, talks about all the ways in which Black Americans’ struggle for civil rights is at the core of the country’s democratic advancement.__National Black Worker Center Pro

America's debtor prison system must be stopped

Dec 10th, 2019 31m 52s

Damion Shade, a criminal justice policy analyst at the Oklahoma Policy Institute, talks about the key challenges and prospects he sees for undoing some of the damage from America's racist and punitive prison system not just on the people whose

Racialized Women's Unrecognized Community Work Uplifts Everyone

Dec 3rd, 2019 18m 26s

Nina Banks, economics professor at Bucknell University and a board member at the Economic Policy Institute, discusses her groundbreaking work on minority women's unpaid collective labor—things like civic and community protests and organizing th

Native Americans Too Often Left Out of Economic Debate

Nov 26th, 2019 28m 42s

Season 2 of the podcast kicks off strong with Patrice Kunesh, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis' Center for Indian Country Development. She talks to host Pedro da Costa about the specific challenges facing various Native Ameri

‘I Want To See Myself in the Data’

Nov 19th, 2019 25m 42s

In the sixth and final episode of the State of Working America Podcast's first season, Rhonda Sharpe, director of the Women's Institute for Science, Equity and Race, talks about why we need to capture data in a way that makes real-world sense o

Uber and the Gig Economy Fallacy

Nov 12th, 2019 25m 42s

The ubiquitous nature of ride-sharing makes it easy to forget that much of Uber and Lyft's business model relies on skirting basic regulations in ways that harm drivers and passengers. That's the focus of this episode of the State of Working Am

Killing U.S. Manufacturing is a Policy Choice

Nov 5th, 2019 49m 17s

The U.S. manufacturing has been shrinking sharply in recent decades, but it’s not an accident or a historical inevitability. In Episode 4 of the State of Working America Podcast, host Pedro da Costa talks to Mickey Ray Williams, a Firestone pla

Building Worker Power

Oct 29th, 2019 26m 31s

EPI Policy Director Heidi Shierholz highlights all the ways that labor laws have been employed against workers over the years to curb their power and influence in the labor market. We talk about the fresh wave of strikes around the nation and t

Reimagining the American Dream

Oct 22nd, 2019 27m 41s

President Barack Obama’s former deputy labor secretary Chris Lu joins the State of Working America Podcast in Episode 2, which explores the decline of worker power in recent decades, changing workforce demographics and Donald Trump’s destructiv

America's Racist Economy

Oct 15th, 2019 25m 35s

The State of Working America Podcast’s debut episode features economist Valerie Wilson, from the Economic Policy Institute, discussing the central role race in the American economy.Wilson debunks the widely-held myth that education is an easy

State of Working America Podcast Preview

Oct 9th, 2019 1m 20s

The Economic Policy Institute will soon launch the State of Working America Podcast, which is aimed at elevating workers’ voices in the economic debate. Communications Director Pedro da Costa breaks down what you can expect—and how to subscribe

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