Enrique Lopezlira is the director of the Low-Wage Work program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. He is a labor economist, directing and conducting research on how policies affect working families, with a particular focus on how these policies impact racial and gender equity.
Dr. Lopezlira previously served as senior policy advisor for economic and employment policy at UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza), one of the largest Latinx civil rights organizations in the nation. He also served as deputy director for policy and research at Western Progress, a think tank advancing progressive policies and change in the eight states of the Rocky Mountain West.
He also brings experiences in advising various government agencies and testifying at the state and federal levels. He is often asked for his economic insights and analysis by English and Spanish media; he has appeared on CNN, CNN en Español, and Univision, and has been covered in Al Jazeera, Politico, and the Washington Post.
Dr. Lopezlira holds a doctorate in economics from Howard University. He also holds a master’s degree in international management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Arizona State University.
The Living Wage Act is a proposed ballot measure to increase the California minimum wage to $18 an hour by 2025. This report examines which workers stand to benefit from the proposed increase.
This blog post highlights some of the findings from our just-released update to our chartbook “California’s labor market in the times of COVID-19,” which explores labor market trends in California over the past two historic years.
This data tool tracks the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers in California, and how the state is recovering from these effects. The pandemic left millions of Californians out of work, and while the economy has begun to recover in recent months, some workers continue to struggle. This resource will be updated periodically, as new data becomes available, to allow users to monitor the progress of labor markets in the state. Last updated May 18, 2022.
In this blog we will use the Low-Wage Data Explorer to dispel some myths about the one-in-three workers in California who are paid low wages.
In this research brief we provide estimates of safety net use among families of construction workers in Arizona. We find that 45% of families of construction workers in Arizona are enrolled in one or more safety net programs at a cost to the state and the federal government of over $700 million per year. By comparison, among all Arizona workers, 32% have a family member enrolled in one or more safety net programs. Over one-third (36%) of construction workers lack health insurance, almost three times the rate for all workers in Arizona (13%).
Labor Center researcher Lopezlira said his organization is beginning research on why the public sector has seen slow recovery in employment staffing since the pandemic. He said the city’s lack of affordable housing could be one of the causes of the high number of vacancies in government positions.
“I think that creating a more sustainable economy creates good-paying jobs for workers who already have those skills,” said Enrique Lopezlira, a labor economist at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
Lopezlira, who’s studied the impact of wages and turnover on airport safety and security, says lower turnover reduces the constant need to train or retrain new workers. This can also reduce any existing gaps in security or safety measures that could pose a risk to worker and public safety.
“Consumer spending is also going to drop severely, so I’m not sure how many real opportunities for gig type of work there will be, or whether people will be able to live on those kinds of jobs,” Enrique Lopezlira said.
“The good news is we have seen some wage growth …,” Enrique Lopezlira said. “There have been more job openings than workers. The problem is some of that wage growth has slowed down and with inflation creeping up, the real purchasing power of the wage has declined.”
A Labor Center study on the San Francisco International Airport, cited by the Florida union in its report, found higher employee wages led to lower turnover and better performance. Workers who stayed at their jobs longer also had the experience to better avoid mistakes and identify safety and security issues, Lopezlira said.
Enrique Lopezlira, the director of the Low-Wage Work program at U.C. Berkeley’s Labor Center has studied the links between wages and airport security and functionality based on wage increases at San Francisco International Airport. He said that significant wage increases at SFO led to a decrease in turnover and disciplinary actions and an increase in productivity.
“Two-thirds of these missing workers are 65 years and older, which makes sense given that we are still in a pandemic where older people face the greatest health risk,” he told MarketWatch. “But the workforce has largely returned to its pre-pandemic level, so this does not support the idea that ‘nobody wants to work anymore.’”
Enrique Lopezlira, director of the center’s Low Wage Work Program, said researchers there have determined that anyone who makes less than two-thirds of the median income in a given area of California should be defined as a low-wage worker. In 2021, that figure was $18.02 per hour.
Lopezlira, director of the low-wage program at the university’s labor center, said that the four-day week would most likely put hourly workers at a financial disadvantage. Most of them are looking to work more hours during the week.
