EPI was the first — and remains the premier — organization to focus on the economic condition of low- and middle-income Americans and their families. Its careful research on the status of American workers has become the gold standard in that field. Its encyclopedic State of Working America, issued every two years since 1988, is stocked in university libraries around the world. EPI researchers, who often testify to Congress and are widely cited in the media, first brought to light the disconnect between pay and productivity that marked the U.S. economy in the 1990s and is now widely recognized as a cause of growing inequality.