About

EARN is a nationwide network of research, policy, and organizing and advocacy organizations fighting, state by state, for an economy that works for everyone.

Our member organizations work in cities and states throughout the country, providing data-based assessments of local conditions for working families and offering policy roadmaps to shared economic opportunity and security.

EARN partners work with advocates, civic leaders, businesses, and policymakers at every level of government to ensure all Americans have the resources they need to build productive and secure lives. They promote high-road economic growth, pursuing economic development strategies that lessen racial and economic inequity and raise living standards for working people, families, and communities across the nation.  They advance policies that raise wages, guarantee paid sick days and paid family leave, and establish standards for stable and predictable work schedules. They work to secure access to high-quality childcare, education and job training, and livable retirement benefits.

Founded in 1998, EARN is a network of close to 60 state and local organizations in 43 states and the District of Columbia that share expertise and resources to strengthen each other and pursue their common mission. Together with collaborating scholars and national organizations, along with allied state and local groups representing affected communities, EARN partners constitute the core progressive research and policy infrastructure for shaping and promoting a better economic future in the states.

EARN is coordinated by its member organizations and staff at the Economic Policy Institute.

EARN facilitates collaboration, peer learning, and the dissemination of analyses, research, and advocacy tools.

Our team

  • Naomi Walker, Director of EARN

    Naomi Walker joined EPI in 2018 as director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), a national network of almost 60 state-level policy research and advocacy organizations coordinated by EPI. Prior to joining EPI, Naomi Walker served as assistant to the president at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the nation’s largest and fastest-growing public services employees union, with more than 1.6 million active and retired members. In her role on the executive team of the union, she was responsible for coordinating AFSCME’s partnerships with allies and coalitions in order to build power for working families.

    Prior to joining AFSCME in 2012, Walker served as director of state government relations and deputy director of the government affairs department for the AFL-CIO, where she worked with national unions, state federations, state legislators, and allies to coordinate state legislative campaigns around the country, providing guidance on strategy, message, member mobilization, and research, as well as writing model legislation. Walker has coordinated state issue campaigns on a variety of issues, including fighting so-called “right-to-work” legislation and attacks on working families; exposing profitable corporations like Walmart that shift their health care costs onto state taxpayers; stopping the export of American jobs; and providing affordable health care for working families.

    While at the AFL-CIO, Walker also served as assistant director of the AFL-CIO politics and field department, leading labor’s field campaign for the 2006 election cycle. She managed staff across the country as they coordinated labor’s political program to educate, mobilize, and turn out union members to vote.

    In 2009, Walker was appointed associate deputy secretary of labor under the Obama administration, serving as a liaison between the Department of Labor and the labor movement before she rejoined the AFL-CIO in 2010.

    Before joining the AFL-CIO in 1997, Walker served as field director of the Preamble Center for Public Policy, where she helped coordinate both press and field work on progressive policy issues like corporate accountability and fair trade. From 1993 until 1996, she was the Midwest regional organizer for the Children’s Defense Fund.

  • David Cooper, Deputy Director of EARN, Senior Economic Analyst

    David Cooper

    David Cooper helps to coordinate EARN, and leads EPI’s technical and analytical support for the network. As a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute, he conducts both national and state-level research, with a focus on the minimum wage, wage theft, employment and unemployment, poverty, and wage and income trends.

    David’s analyses on the impact of minimum wage laws have been used by policymakers and advocates in city halls and statehouses across the country, as well as in Congress and the White House. He has testified in many states and cities on the challenges facing low-wage workers and their families, and has been interviewed and cited by numerous local and national media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and NPR.

  • Anu Kumar, Omidyar Network Communications Fellow

    Anu Kumar is the Omidyar Network Communications Fellow at the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) team at EPI. She supports communications efforts to connect the network and highlight efforts from the state-level policy research and advocacy organizations that make up EARN. Kumar has supported communications and editorial work at several think tanks in Washington, D.C., including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, and New America. The Omidyar Network Communications Fellows Program is designed to place early-career communicators within economic justice organizations and issue-based campaigns.

  • Jaimie Worker, Senior State Policy Coordinator

    Jaimie K. Worker is the senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) at EPI. She is committed to ensuring that racial and gender equity is a public policy priority and that the leaders of communities impacted by structural racism and oppression are key collaborators in developing public policy.

    Prior to joining EPI, Worker was a senior policy analyst at Community Change, where for more than six years she worked on racial and economic justice campaigns focused on jobs and public investment in partnership with grassroots organizations. Previously, she worked with the New Organizing Institute, as well as the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Michigan, supporting workplace organizing and policy campaigns to win improved working conditions in the restaurant industry.

    Worker is the proud daughter of immigrants and hails from Detroit, Michigan.

  • Julia Wolfe, State Economic Analyst

    Julia Wolfe joined the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) team at EPI as an economic analyst in 2019. In addition to conducting national and state-level research on labor market trends, inequality, and collective bargaining, she provides technical support to the state-level policy research and advocacy organizations that make up EARN. Julia first joined EPI as a research assistant in 2017. Prior to joining EPI, Julia worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the retail and manufacturing employment analyst for the Current Employment Statistics program. She is a proud union member, Chicagoan, and Truman State graduate.

Our national partners