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Women in the U.S. still experience a major gender wage gap, 55 years after the Equal Pay Act was passed, Business Insider reports. On average, American women earn 80 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn, according to a report by the Senate Joint Economic Committee Democratic Staff. Their annual earnings are roughly $10,500 less than men. Women also make less than men regardless the educational difference between the two, per the report. “A woman with a graduate degree earns $5,000 less than a man with a bachelor’s degree,” the report says.
The report, “Real Action is Needed to Give American Workers the Raise They Deserve,” highlights that the real hourly wage for the median worker has only grown less than 0.2 percentage point per year on average since 1979. The Republican tax law does little to solve this problem, with 99.2 percent of the benefits going to the top 5 percent of households once it is fully implemented. Instead of leading to broadly shared wage gains, the tax bill is likely to exacerbate the trends we are already seeing.
Joint Economic Committee Democrats released today a report on the state of retirement in America. American workers are facing a crisis, the inability to retire with dignity after a life of hard work. Half of all American families near retirement have $12,000 or less in formal retirement savings. Congress should now focus on policies that broaden access to low cost, high-yield retirement savings options, strengthen Social Security, secure pension plans, and restore access to a stable and adequate retirement for an aging population.
Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee, which is comprised of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, have issued a report detailing a bleak picture of the country’s retirement landscape. Retirement Security in Peril catalogues data from outside sources that will be familiar to industry stakeholders: Half of households near retirement have less than $12,000 in formal retirement savings; large employer sponsorship of defined benefit plans has plummeted over the decades; 30 percent of fulltime workers in the private sector don’t have access to a savings plan through their employers.
Congress has to do a lot more to improve retirement security, said a report issued Wednesday by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee. In the report, Retirement Security in Peril, the members call for modernizing Social Security and by raising the payroll tax cap and expanding benefits for some people, expanding access to defined contribution plans by allowing more open multiple employer plans and offering start-up credits for small businesses to help motivate them to offer retirement plans, among other steps.
A new report by Congressional Joint Economic Committee Democrats warns that American retirement security could be in peril due to slow wage growth, skimpier pension plans, and insufficient access to workplace retirement savings plans. The report, released today, recommends that Congress raise the payroll tax cap (set right now at about $128,000) to fund Social Security, and establish tax credits for startups that offer retirement contribution plans, among other measures. Read it here.