Some policy experts are not bothered by the prospect of further ballooning the nation’s debt or deficit, given that the economy is still recovering from COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions.
“We’re talking about infrastructure here: it almost pays for itself, raises national productivity, causes fewer accidents and moves goods and services to places easier,” said Rob Scott of the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Al Jazeera
April 9, 2021
What has changed, most notably, is the consensus among many economists. Whereas a few years ago, a key concern was the level of debt relative to GDP, with 90% to 100% considered a danger zone, now many are less worried about it.
“The economics field has shifted,” says Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to the secretary of labor during the Obama administration.
The Christian Science Monitor
April 9, 2021
Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator, voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though his state is one of the poorest in the nation and data from the Economic Policy Institute shows such an increase would boost the pay of some 250,000 residents by about $4,000 a year.
USA Today
April 9, 2021
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
NBC News
April 9, 2021
“I would be very surprised — I do not believe that that will be the sum total of what he is talking about on child care,” Elise Gould, an economist studying child care at the Economic Policy Institute, said of the package Biden revealed Wednesday. “But it’s pretty clear that if you’re going to invest in child care, yes, there are physical infrastructure needs — but it is an industry run by people who are providing that care, and we need to be investing in that workforce for the system to be high-quality and sustainable.”
Politico
April 9, 2021
Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator, voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though his state is one of the poorest in the nation and data from the Economic Policy Institute shows such an increase would boost the pay of some 250,000 residents by about $4,000 a year.
USA Today
April 9, 2021
Citing a study by the Economic Policy Institute, the Department of Energy further notes that the industry has one of “the highest indirect job employment multipliers, where one direct job leads to an additional 5.43 indirect jobs.” Put differently, for every job generated by the profitable production of oil and natural gas, there will be more than 5 jobs created in related industries. A 2015 study from the German government assessed that the similar economic multiplier from “green energy jobs” is around 2, or less than half the multiplier for the oil and gas industry.
Forbes
April 9, 2021
The top corporate tax rate has been falling since the early 1950s. In 2013, the Economic Policy Institute pointed out that this rate was 52 percent throughout the Eisenhower administration — 17 percentage points higher than the 2013 rate of 35 percent. The U.S. GDP grew by almost 4 percent annually in the 1950s, compared with a 1.8 percent growth rate in the 2000s. The Trump tax cuts that lowered the rate to 21 percent also make the case that economic growth is not linked to severe cuts in business taxes. After the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, only 4 percent of businesses increased hiring, according to a survey by the National Association for Business and the Economy. The Tax Policy Center found that the U.S. economy grew more slowly during the two years after the tax cuts than the two years before they took effect, and that business fixed investment was “slightly negative for the year, a sharp contrast to the nearly 5 percent real growth rate in 2017” before the tax cuts.
The Hill
April 9, 2021
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
NBC News
April 9, 2021
The system is designed to make people feel bad about themselves. That’s how Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, described it to CNBC. And consider what that system is.
Almost 30% of Americans nearing retirement age have no access to a pension or employer retirement plan. 76% of all Americans fear they will not achieve a secure retirement. Everyone privately thinks that they’re screwing up, Morrissey added, and yet if everyone is screwing up, then it’s clearly a system flaw.
WBUR On Point
April 9, 2021
Indeed, Biden campaigned on a much more robust $775 billion caregiving plan that would subsidize child care programs, give child care workers raises, and provide free prekindergarten to 3- and 4-year-olds, among other things.
“I would be very surprised — I do not believe that that will be the sum total of what he is talking about on child care,” Elise Gould, an economist studying child care at the Economic Policy Institute, said of the package Biden revealed Wednesday. “But it’s pretty clear that if you’re going to invest in child care, yes, there are physical infrastructure needs — but it is an industry run by people who are providing that care, and we need to be investing in that workforce for the system to be high-quality and sustainable.”
Politico
April 9, 2021
National data from 2012 found that while 13% of teachers in affluent schools left that year — either to switch schools or exit teaching — 22% of teachers at high-poverty schools departed. Turnover is also substantially higher among special education teachers and teachers of color.
“There is a shortage that is much more acute in high-poverty schools,” said Emma García, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Chalkbeat
April 9, 2021
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden fired Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal labor law.
The Nation
April 9, 2021
“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.
“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.
CNBC
April 9, 2021
The United States was suffering a serious teacher shortage before COVID-19 hit. The Economic Policy Institute quotes a study that states school districts “had serious difficulty finding qualified teachers for their positions” — in 2016. This would impact “students’ inability to learn,” and affect “student achievement.” It would also make teaching less attractive to graduates, perpetuating the cycle.
Yahoo Finance
April 9, 2021
A report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that Section 232 measures under Trump, which applied a 25% tariff on imported steel products and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum, protected the domestic steel industry from chronic global excess capacity in major exporting countries.
“These tariffs were directly and simply good for steel producers and their workers,” Robert Scott, a senior economist at EPI, told Yahoo Finance. “It generated more jobs and more investment and more output than the domestic steel industry. … The fact is there was no significant negative impact on the prices of downstream products like cars, one of the biggest users of domestic steel.”
Yahoo Finance
April 9, 2021
That’s no surprise to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. When the economy tumbles, the job market tends to be worse for young people, she says.
“They’ll choose, all else equal, people with more experience,” Gould says about employers. “So young workers are left out in the cold and many are going to have a hard time starting their career.”
NPR
April 9, 2021
“Today’s number is certainly a promising sign for the recovery, especially as vaccinations increase and vital provisions in the American Rescue Plan have continued to ramp up since the March reference period to today’s data,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post Friday. “The benefits of the ARP will continue to be captured in coming months.”
Sinclair Broadcast Group
April 9, 2021
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden fired Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal labor law.
Robb’s supporters protested that Biden had unfairly and illegally thrown him out of office 10 months before the end of his four-year term. In reality, Biden had ample legal authority for removing Robb, much of which is set forth in a legal memo penned by none other than Chief Justice John Roberts when he worked in the Reagan administration.
A new report by the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows why Biden was right to fire Robb—and to do so quickly. The GAO found that Robb was dismantling the agency from the inside. He reduced staff size, destroyed employee morale, and failed to spend the money appropriated by Congress. This all occurred while Robb was pursuing an anti-worker, pro-corporate agenda.
The Nation
April 9, 2021
In all, those long-term unemployed represented 24% of the 9.9 million total jobless workers last month, according to the bureau. (The data are without seasonal adjustments.)
“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.
“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.
CNBC
April 9, 2021
Biden said he wants Congress to pass a federal minimum wage increase, but there’s no deal in sight. Experts say people such as Romero often must make difficult decisions to sustain themselves.
“It’s not a question of being smart or being thoughtful or planning for the future. You are forced to make a series of bad decisions when life doesn’t work, and it can’t work with wages that low,” says Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington that researches economic policies for working people.
USA Today
April 9, 2021
For all of the good jobs news recently, there are still nearly 10 million people who are out of work, and more than 4 million of them have been unemployed for six months or longer.
“So we still have a very long way to go until we get a full recovery,” said Elise Gould with the Economic Policy Institute. She said the industries that have the furthest to go are the ones you’d expect: “leisure and hospitality, accommodations, food services, restaurants” and the public sector, especially in education.
Marketplace
April 9, 2021
“March was definitely a bright spot. The increase of more than 900,000 jobs is definitely a promising start to the recovery,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Insider. “It’s good, but let’s make sure we can hold onto it.”
Business Insider
April 9, 2021
Liberal groups say those steps represent a big change from prior Democratic administrations. Under Obama, for instance, two of the most prominent think-tanks on the left — the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute — felt almost entirely shut out of policymaking.
Now, by contrast, CEPR and EPI have former employees — Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey — occupying two of the three positions on the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Janelle Jones, a former EPI economic analyst, is now chief economist at the Labor Department.
Washington Post
April 9, 2021
That’s no surprise to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. When the economy tumbles, the job market tends to be worse for young people, she says.
The reality is that there may be plenty of cheaper-to-hire college graduates, but in an economy still recovering from major layoffs, there are also plenty more experienced workers desperate for jobs.
“They’ll choose, all else equal, people with more experience,” Gould says about employers. “So young workers are left out in the cold and many are going to have a hard time starting their career.”
NPR
April 9, 2021
Features Q&A with Lynn Rhinehart.
Law360
April 2, 2021