Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel

Julie Vogtman is Senior Counsel for the Family Economic Security Program at the National Women’s Law Center. She works on a range of issues involving economic support for low-income women and their families, including minimum wage policies, unemployment benefits, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). She also contributes to the Center’s work on federal budget and tax policies, including implementation of the tax credit components of the Affordable Care Act.  Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Vogtman was an associate with Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Furman University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Expert in: Family Support Programs, Federal Budget, Federal Tax Policy, Minimum Wage, Unemployment, Poverty & Income Support
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My Take

Listen to Mark Bittman – Sustainable Food Requires Sustainable Jobs!

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 13, 2012 at 04:48 pm

It’s not often that I come to work and find I can credit the same person with the inspiration for both yesterday’s dinner and today’s blog post – but today I’d like to thank Mark Bittman for his delicious tomato panzanella recipe as well as his brilliant NY Times Opinionator post on the substandard wages and working conditions faced by many food industry workers. 

Bittman’s blog post may not be as fun to read as some of his other writing, but it sheds light on a serious issue that is too often overlooked, even by foodies who go to great lengths to assure that farmers and animals are treated with respect. As Bittman observes, “If you care about sustainability — the capacity to endure — it’s time to expand our definition to include workers. You can’t call food sustainable when it’s produced by people whose capacity to endure is challenged by poverty-level wages.”

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Tags: Tipped Minimum Wage, Minimum Wage, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

High Incomes, Low Taxes: It's Good to Be in the Fortunate 400

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 08, 2012 at 04:30 pm

The IRS recently released new data on individual income taxes paid in 2009, including a report on “The 400 Individual Income Tax Returns Reporting the Largest Adjusted Gross Incomes Each Year, 1992-2009.” So interesting, right?!

...ok, so maybe the IRS could have come up with a catchier title. But the report really is fascinating, in a “wow, that’s crazy and unfair” sort of way – especially when you compare the data on the richest 400 American households (with annual incomes averaging around $200 million) to income tax data for the rest of us, as David Cay Johnston did in his excellent piece on “The Fortunate 400.” Johnston’s whole article is well worth a read, but here are a few particularly shocking statistics:

  • Six of the 400 richest American households paid no federal income taxes in 2009. Yes, you read that correctly – a few of the people with the very highest incomes in the country, raking in on average half a million dollars every day, managed to pay zero federal income tax in 2009.
  • 110 of the top 400 paid a federal income tax rate of 15 percent or less... just like a whole lot of people making a whole lot less than $200 million!
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Tags: Taxes, Federal Tax Policy, Tax & Budget | Add new comment

Happy Birthday to the Minimum Wage!

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 05, 2012 at 10:26 am

One hundred years ago this week, on June 4, 1912, Massachusetts enacted the first minimum wage law in the United States – the first in a series of similar laws that states passed in the years before the federal minimum wage was established in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938. 

In honor of this milestone, I read up on the history of the minimum wage and was struck by how one old adage seems to apply: the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Here are a few facts about the minimum wage in its early days that remain just as true today.   

  • The minimum wage is critical issue for women.  That first minimum wage law in Massachusetts set up a commission to determine a minimum wage only for women workers, who were especially vulnerable to exploitation by employers and regularly were paid less than men.  It was the first female Cabinet member – Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (and an all-around rock star) who later advocated forcefully for the first federal minimum wage law, often citing the particularly deplorable wages and working conditions faced by women and children.
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CEO Pay Keeps Going Up, But What About the Minimum Wage?

Posted by
Anna McClure, Fellow
Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: May 25, 2012 at 01:45 pm

Today brings news that CEO pay went up last year by 6 percent, bringing the average salary to $9.6 million per year for the head of a public company. Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage remains stuck at $7.25 per hour — just $14,500 for a year of full-time, minimum wage work. As our recent infographic makes clear, with women underrepresented at the top and overrepresented at the bottom of the income scale, increasing the minimum wage is critical to women:

It's time to raise the minimum wage.

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Minimum Wage Increase Advances in New Jersey

Posted by Julie Vogtman, Senior Counsel | Posted on: May 25, 2012 at 01:00 pm

I have to admit, I’m feeling pretty good today — I’m just hours away from starting a long holiday weekend, and I get to report more happy news on the minimum wage! Today’s update comes from New Jersey, where the General Assembly just passed a bill (A-2162) that would raise the state minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 per hour and index the wage to keep pace with inflation. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that over half a million workers — the majority of them women — will get a raise if A-2162 is enacted.

That raise is sorely needed: full-time minimum wage earnings of $14,500 a year leave a mom with two children thousands of dollars below the federal poverty line in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the country. Raising New Jersey’s minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would mean an extra $2,500 per year, which could make a real difference for women and families struggling to make ends meet. And indexing the wage for inflation would help ensure that the buying power of the minimum wage does not erode as it has over the past decades; indeed, if the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since the 1960s, it would be more than $10.50 per hour today.

Low-wage workers and their families are not the only ones who would benefit from a minimum wage increase – New Jersey’s economy would get a boost, too. More money in workers’ pockets means more dollars flowing into local businesses, and that means more jobs: according to EPI, raising the minimum wage to $8.50 per hour would generate over $277 million in economic activity in New Jersey, creating close to 2,500 jobs.

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Tags: Minimum Wage, New Jersey, New York, Minimum Wage, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | 1 comment