The school bus driver shortage continues to play out across the country, making it more challenging for students to get to school and placing additional burdens on the K–12 public education system. As has been typical in recent years, the beginning of the school year brought forward a steady stream of reports documenting challenges schools are experiencing hiring bus drivers. Our latest analysis finds that school bus driver employment remains 9.5% below 2019 staffing levels.

But there are positive signs that school districts are taking steps to address the shortage. School bus driver employment overall has increased modestly in the last year, with growth in public K–12 schools likely being driven by increasing hourly wages for bus drivers.

It is important to note the available data likely do not fully capture the impact of the ending of pandemic relief funds or the instability for school districts created by the Trump administration. During the summer—a vital time for school district planning and hiring decisions—the Trump administration temporarily withheld $6.2 billion in funds from before- and after-school programs and teacher development. The Trump administration is also seeking to fully dismantle the Department of Education. Harsh anti-immigrant policies are also having harmful impacts on students and education staff. Under these circumstances, more time is needed to get a better sense of how policy changes during 2025 have impacted the K–12 education workforce.

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As the government shutdown nears the end of its third full week, nearly a quarter of the federal workforce is furloughed. That means that more than 600,000 workers are not performing important federal service jobs—and are not receiving a paycheck. Still, while some federal agencies are working in limited capacity, many worker protection agencies have ceased the enforcement of our nation’s labor laws. For example, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ceased almost all case handling, including conducting routine union elections and investigating unfair labor practice charges. This means workers’ ability to exercise their right to form unions or hold their employers accountable for violating the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) are on hold indefinitely until the government reopens. However, even after the government reopens, workers’ rights will still be under attack due to pre-shutdown actions of the Trump administration.Read more

Earlier this month, the Republican-led U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) notably held a hearing on labor law reform that sought to both identify problems workers face when they seek to unionize and explore possible solutions.

A major focus of the hearing was Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-Mo.) Faster Labor Contracts Act—bipartisan legislation to improve the process for reaching initial collective bargaining agreements when workers first organize a union. Currently, it is a common tactic for employers to slow-walk the bargaining process because there are no penalties for doing so, and delay frustrates workers and undermines their union. Research shows that only 36% of newly organized bargaining units achieve an initial collective bargaining agreement within a year, and a third of newly organized bargaining units still do not have a first contract after three years.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act would require parties to begin bargaining promptly after a union is certified, and if bargaining fails to produce an agreement within 90 days (or longer if the parties agree), the parties would be required to engage in mediation. If mediation was not successful, an arbitration panel would be convened to hear from both parties and render a final and binding decision on the terms of an initial collective bargaining agreement. Through this process, workers would be assured of reaching an initial collective bargaining agreement—the reason they sought to organize a union—within a reasonable period of time.

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On Friday, October 3, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) did not publish the September Employment Situation Summary report. The monthly “jobs report” provides policymakers, businesses, and the public with the most rigorous and timely employment data on the labor market. The absence of official data comes at a crucial time, as several Trump administration policies—including immigration enforcement, chaotic tariffs, and federal workforce cuts—have heightened uncertainty about the current labor market. The suspension of all BLS activities related to labor market data is unnecessary and harms the economy as it delays vital information about the labor market. These data delays can lead economic actors (e.g., the Federal Reserve, Congress, investors, and employers) to fall behind the curve of economic events and hence make suboptimal decisions.Read more

Although there have been tremendous strides toward gender equity over the last few generations, it remains the fact that women and men tend to work in different types of jobs. The differences have narrowed over time, but the expansion and contraction of certain industries over the last five decades can likely explain some differences in men’s and women’s labor force participation.

Specifically, we have seen a long-term decline in male-dominated jobs—often jobs with higher pay thanks to higher unionization rates—alongside declines in men’s labor force participation (with the exception of the past decade). Meanwhile, female-dominated occupations are growing faster, but unfortunately many of these are currently lower-paying professions. To strengthen labor force participation, job quality and pay need to improve.

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Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released preliminary benchmark revisions suggesting that job growth was only about half as fast as originally reported through much of 2024. To be clear, these revisions are not corrections of mistakes, but rather part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data available. In this case, the payroll employment numbers are benchmarked against unemployment insurance tax records, which represent about 97% of total employment.

It might be tempting to think that this preliminary downward revision means that the U.S. economy was much weaker than originally reported. But most of the slower job growth in 2024 was the result of smaller working-age population growth due to reduced immigration and the aging of the workforce—it was not due to degraded labor force participation or opportunities for prime-age workers in the U.S. labor market. In fact, research shows that there were about 600,000 to 900,000 fewer net immigrants between 2023 and 2024. Smaller population growth requires smaller increases in the number of jobs to maintain employment rates.

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This op-ed was originally published on MSNBC.com. Read the full piece here. 

Just over a week ago, President Donald Trump issued a proclamation declaring a requirement that employers pay a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visas. The announcement has created considerable outcry from employers, reflecting H-1B’s status as the country’s biggest work visa program and an important pathway for U.S. employers to hire skilled talent from abroad. To my surprise, Trump’s proclamation seemed to cite a study that I co-authored for the Economic Policy Institute, showing how some employers have taken advantage of the visa to underpay college-educated employees.

It’s true that the H-1B program is deeply flawed. But the $100,000 fee on employers won’t fix what’s wrong with the program and could have unintended consequences. Large firms and those that already pay lower wages will have less difficulty paying the fee, while startups and smaller firms that offer fair or above-market wages will struggle to pay it. Rather than the administration’s misguided and poorly implemented idea, there are much better ways to protect workers, whether they are H-1B employees or U.S.-born workers or green card holders already employed in the United States.

Read the full op-ed here. 

On March 28, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed an anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) higher education law that regulates classroom discussions, puts diversity scholarships at risk, and largely bans diversity efforts on campus. Apart from thwarting diversity measures at public universities, the bill also prohibits faculty strikes, creates post-tenure reviews, and blocks faculty unions from negotiating on tenure—marking one of the most significant rollbacks of collective bargaining in the state in years.

The bill reflects a broader national trend: In the lead-up to the fall 2025 school year, roughly a dozen states have passed anti-DEI legislation targeting higher education, including bans on DEI offices and trainings, censorship of equity topics in classrooms, and prohibitions on diversity statements in admissions and hiring. Ohio’s case, however, highlights how this agenda evolves differently across states.Read more

After two uncharacteristic years of decline in 2022 and 2023, the pay for chief executive officers (CEOs) of the 350 largest firms in the U.S. increased in 2024. As of the latest data available, realized compensation—which captures what CEOs took home in pay after any stock-based compensation was sold—averaged nearly 23 million dollars in 2024 at the 350 largest publicly traded firms, an increase of 5.9% since 2023.

EPI’s new CEO pay data page details the latest information on CEO pay, the sources of CEO pay, and how CEO pay compares with what typical workers are paid, the stock market, and the pay of other highly paid workers. The new web page also provides historical data on each measure as far back as 1965.Read more