EARN Notice August 2025

Dear EARN Community,

The last time I wrote this letter was December 2024, and I was four months into my time at EPI. Though I was starting to find my footing, I was slowly fumbling through most of the R code I was writing, and I still didn’t understand half the acronyms I heard in meetings. I was also, as all of us were, bracing myself for a second Trump presidency.

As of this month, I’ve officially been with EARN for a year. My writing is improving, my coding skills are much sharper, and I at least know what every acronym refers to, even if I can’t always remember what exactly it stands for. Still, no amount of bracing could have prepared me for what these last eight months have brought. The Trump administration’s continuous, unprecedented attacks on workers, especially Black and immigrant workers, are deeply upsetting, and I’m horrified by the catastrophic damage that the Republican budget bill will do to working people and their families in the coming years.

But there have also been bright spots. States used the 2025 state legislative season to pass a slate of pro-worker policies, wins that included extending eligibility for unemployment insurance to striking workers and ensuring paid leave for public sector employees. Advocates also fended off numerous harmful bills in critical defensive victories. EARN network organizations and their allies played a role in many, if not all, of these important wins. Even where measures fell short, these efforts made incremental progress that will pave the way for future success.

And we have a way forward. Even as the federal political landscape grows increasingly more hostile, there is opportunity at the state and local level for change.

Our new Holding the Line series offers a roadmap for how states can defend against federal attacks by locking in existing worker protections. It then goes further, detailing ways that states can close critical gaps and pass proactive, pro-worker policy to get us closer to that vision of an economy that works for all. Right now, we have pieces up on four key aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act—minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and wage payment. More to come soon on worker health and safety, unemployment insurance, and nondiscrimination law. Please let us know if there are pieces of worker policy that you’d like to see us cover in this series.

It’s been a hard year to start a career in the progressive economic policy world. At the same time, I am supported and energized by the strength and solidarity of our EARN community. I can’t wait to attend my first EARNCon this November and I hope to see you all in New Orleans.
 
In solidarity, 
Emma Cohn
State Policy Research Assistant

New Publications

Upcoming EARN Data Trainings

Innovating Injustice: How AI is Being Used to Harm Low-Income Communities 
Thursday, August 21, 2025, at 1:00 pm ET 
Co-sponsored by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this webinar will examine how artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and related technologies are being used extensively by governments, employers, landlords, educators, and others to make key decisions about the lives of low-income people, frequently with devastating consequences. This session will explore the ways AI is being used to determine how low-income people work, live, learn, and survive--implicating issue areas of public benefits, employment, housing, education, domestic violence, and child welfare--and introduce ways advocates can identify and oppose them. The session will be presented by Kevin De Liban, Founder and President of TechTonic Justice.

• Register here:  https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ER1GLQ3jTaWe0liPwPZzEw

Foraging for Data in the Wild: Finding, loading, and wrangling economic data with R  
New Date: Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 2:30 pm ET 
Your next economic analysis might begin with a messy dataset lurking among one of your many browser tabs, scattered across multiple spreadsheets, or hosted on an unfamiliar website. You might also want to combine data from different sources to deepen your analysis. This session will go over important techniques for importing data into R, cleaning variable names and time series data, and combining data from different sources. Participants will also gain more familiarity with key government and EPI resources such as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), unemployment insurance claims data, and the State of Working America dashboard. 
Requirements: basic experience coding in R, familiarity with the RStudio interface, and ability to install R libraries (sufficient system permissions)

• Register here:  https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/BsgGeDXASwSxzCeF1_T2uA

ICYMI: EARN Announcements & Recent Events

EARNCon 2025: General Registration is Open!
General registration pricing will be available until Sept. 30th
We are thrilled to host EARNCon in partnership with the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE), in New Orleans, LA from November 12–14, 2025. This year’s conference will center around the theme “Community, Solidarity, Resistance: Building multi-racial worker power in the states."