EPI in the news

• EPI Clips: 7/8/20
  | July 8, 2020
• Unemployment likely higher than reported rate

  Economic Policy Institute economists Heidi Shierholz and Elise Gould told Axios that on top of the 17.8 million unemployed workers, there are another 2 million workers who were misclassified as “employed not at work.”

  Newsmax | July 7, 2020
• To revive Tennessee’s economy, federal government assistance is a must

  It is far too early to know the extent of COVID-19’s impact – either from a public health or economic perspective. Instead, policymakers need to be vigilant in ensuring they’ve done everything they can to keep people safe and the economy stable in the face of the continuing effects of the pandemic. The key to both goals is having the federal government provide substantial fiscal aid to state and local governments over the coming years—on the order of $1 trillion between now and the end of 2021. Failure to do this will make U.S. families less safe and will leave the U.S. economy short more than 5 million jobs at the end of this time.

  Tennessean | July 7, 2020
• Economists call for household stimulus checks until full recovery

  The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out “this is the 15th week in a row that unemployment claims have been more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.”  On job creation, EPI notes we still have 14.7 million fewer jobs than in February.  And June’s employment survey was conducted in the week ending June 13th, which came just before Covid cases began spiking upwards in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, and other states.

  Forbes | July 7, 2020
• Without child care, back-to-work parents have few legal options

  Moreover, workers who leave to care for children have no guarantee that they’ll get their job back, given the deep economic damage caused by the pandemic, said Elise Gould, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  Bloomberg Law | July 7, 2020
• How and why are Black and non-Black Latinx communities being affected at a higher rate by the novel coronavirus pandemic?

  In a 2018 study the Economic Policy Institute found that about 16 percent of non-Black Latinx workers and 20 percent of Black workers could complete their jobs or part of their jobs from home, while non-Latinx White workers’ average for telework was 30 percent.

  TCU 360 | July 7, 2020
• The ugly truth about millions of American jobs: They are not coming back
  More than 10 million Americans are currently categorized as temporarily out of work. But historically, nearly 30% of people who tell the Labor Department that they are temporarily unemployed never get their job back, said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “Even though we don’t know if the historical record will hold in this case, it’s an extremely valid concern that not all of those people are going to get called back,” she said.
  CNN Business | July 7, 2020

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