EPI in the news

• Black Americans are still being left behind in the US job market recovery

  Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said he’s encouraged by the Fed’s increased focus on unemployment and higher tolerance for inflation. “In the past there have been Fed chairs who have been overly wary of inflation and they’ve often tried to fight it at the expense of employment,” he says. “That has disproportionately fallen on Black workers.”

  Quartz | May 7, 2021
• Mothers see signs of economic hope after a year of stress

  “Employers have the ability to set the terms of the contract,” said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

  “They’re really holding all the cards. They have all the leverage,” Gould said.

  Gould noted that the country was still down 8.4 million jobs in March from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The economy had been steadily adding jobs before the virus left millions out of work, she said, so theoretically the jobs shortfall is even higher, perhaps as high as 11 million.

  Detroit Free Press | May 7, 2021
• Spring Letdown: Hiring Slows In April, Raising New Challenges For Economy

  “We are certainly not seeing rapid wage growth that would really be the red flag of ‘Wow, things are tight. Employers truly on a really widespread basis can’t find the workers that they need,’” Shierholz said.

  NPR | May 7, 2021
• The PRO Act: What’s in It and Why Is It a Labor Movement Priority?

  Frustratingly for those who want to organize, some union-busting activities are legal under current federal labor law; others are forbidden, but the penalties are light enough that many employers decide to do it anyway. The Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2019 that 41.5% of employers in all union election campaigns are charged with violating federal labor laws, and RWDSU believes that’s exactly what Amazon did in Bessemer.

  Teen Vogue | May 7, 2021
• Many employers want to hire — now. Many workers aren’t ready to go back.

  There’s another mismatch, said Heidi Shierholz at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, between the pay employers are offering and the pay workers are willing to take.

  “If an employer posts a job and then they can’t find the workers that they need, that just means there’s a labor shortage of people who will work at that wage,” she said.

  In a really tight labor market, as Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell recently pointed out, wages would be rising.

  NPR Marketplace | May 7, 2021
• One year into the pandemic, millions of jobs are still missing

  The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said nearly 3 million more jobs would have been added if the current pre-pandemic pace of job creation had continued uninterrupted. Starting from a February 2020 baseline of roughly 152.5 million jobs, the U.S. would have just over 155.1 million jobs as of last month. The actual total is roughly 144.1 million.

  NBC News | May 7, 2021
• Biden Repeals Trump Rule Meant To Protect Gig Economy’s ‘Independent Contractor’ Model

  The Economic Policy Institute says misclassification comes at a steep price for governments.

  “The loss of billions of dollars in tax revenue creates a significant financial burden for local, state, and the federal governments, not only due to lost revenue but also because of the added cost of providing social services to uninsured workers,” the left-leaning think tank found in a 2015 analysis of the problem.

  Huffpost | May 7, 2021

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