EPI in the news

• Hiring strain shows fractured job market — and why reassembling it is proving so difficult

  Still, the possibility that enhanced unemployment benefits could be a disincentive highlights one of the flaws in the pre-pandemic labor market and the need for changes, said Wilson, who heads the think tank’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.

  “The fact that someone may make more though unemployment insurance than working would strongly suggest there was a problem there to begin with, that wages are so low in some occupations that it would be more worthwhile not to work than to go to work,” she said.

  Boston Globe | May 16, 2021
• Biden Aides See Political, Not Economic, Peril in Inflation Data

  “We will have a weird six months ahead,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It will be a real challenge for the administration and the Fed to stay firm on their stance.”

  Bloomberg | May 16, 2021
• The future of the U.S. workforce as some unemployed workers stay home

  More and more COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted and consumers are returning to businesses. But many of the unemployed aren’t heading back to work. Some are blaming supplemental unemployment benefits for the worker shortage, but experts say that’s not the only reason. Heidi Shierholz, Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute, gives her perspective on the future of our economy.

  Matter of Fact | May 16, 2021
• A Shortage of Workers in the US? Not So Fast

  That’s because while the new CDC guidance is likely to boost demand for labor, it could also have the countervailing effect of expanding supply, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

  It is important to remember that there are between 9 million and 11 million fewer jobs in the United States now than there would have been if the economy had not been sidelined by the pandemic last year. The workers who held those jobs may have disappeared from the workforce, but they haven’t disappeared.

  Essentially, as the danger of being infected by the coronavirus declines, multiple factors contribute to a more willing labor force.

  “What is also happening is that schools are opening up — that makes more people able to enter the workforce,” she said. “And more people are getting vaccinated. That means that more people feel safe reentering the workforce.”

  Voice of America | May 16, 2021
• SC’s reasoning for ending federal jobless aid stirs debate

  Hospitality is the only sector in the U.S. showing some signs of a labor shortage, said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute who specializes in state labor markets.

  The “clearest sign of a real labor shortage,” he said, is rapidly rising wages, and it looks like hospitality is actually upping pay to attract workers. That’s overdue, he said, and, even with improved wages, pay in the sector is comparatively low.

  But the economy is still in the midst of recovery, Cooper said.

  The U.S. is still down 8.2 million jobs. As of South Carolina’s last employment report, the state was down 66,600 jobs year-over-year. Two of ten sectors — construction and trade, transportation and utilities — had fully recovered their pre-pandemic jobs while the others posted deficits.

  Cooper said he’s concerned the decision by some states to end benefits early could be “short-sighted.”

  “The point of unemployment insurance is to keep people afloat, until they can find a decent job that’s appropriate for their skills,” he said.

  Removing the safety net while the economy is still recovering, Cooper said, could lead workers into lower-wage jobs or jobs they’re overqualified for.

  While that could fill openings in the short-term, he argued that doesn’t “promote economic well-being.”

  The Charleston Post and Courier | May 16, 2021
• Middle-Class Pay Lost Pace. Is Washington to Blame?

  One of the most urgent questions in economics is why pay for middle-income workers has increased only slightly since the 1970s, even as pay for those near the top has escalated.

  For years, the rough consensus among economists was that inexorable forces like technology and globalization explained much of the trend. But in a new paper, Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens, economists at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, conclude that government is to blame. “Intentional policy decisions (either of commission or omission) have generated wage suppression,” they write.

  Included among these decisions are policymakers’ willingness to tolerate high unemployment and to let employers fight unions aggressively; trade deals that force workers to compete with low-paid labor abroad; and the tacit or explicit blessing of new legal arrangements, like employment contracts that make it harder for workers to seek new jobs.

  Together, Dr. Mishel and Dr. Bivens argue, these developments deprived workers of bargaining power, which kept their wages low.

  New York Times | May 14, 2021
• H-1B: Google leads tech giants in foreign-worker court fight

  Research by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and Howard University professor Ron Hira found the visa program was exploited by outsourcing companies and that “most H-1B employers … are taking advantage of a flawed H-1B prevailing wage rule to underpay their workers … resulting in major savings in labor costs for companies that use the H-1B.”

  The institute’s Daniel Costa and Hira found that in 2019, IT staffing and outsourcing companies had applied for large numbers of H-1B workers at the second-lowest wage levels, while Google, Apple, Cisco and Oracle had a mix of higher and lower levels.

  The Mercury News | May 14, 2021

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