Women are dropping out of the workforce in much higher numbers than men. Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute explains that women are overrepresented in jobs that have been hit hardest by the pandemic and child care has gotten harder to come by.
NPR
October 20, 2020
Roughly 29.8 million people nationally would lose their health insurance if the ACA were repealed, which would be more than double the number of people without health insurance, the Economic Policy Institute has projected. That would include 1,150,000 people in Illinois.
Chicago Tribune
October 20, 2020
The Columbus wage theft ordinance is important and not just because it’s Ohio’s capital and largest city, with almost 900,000 people, but also because it could be a precedent elsewhere. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and Good Jobs First show wage theft is a national problem, and that strong deterrence can force other firms into obeying the law.
In 2017, EPI analyzed data from the 10 most-populous states, including Ohio, and concluded “2.4 million workers—or approximately 17% of eligible low-wage workers in those ten—lose $8 billion each year in unpaid minimum wages. Based on these findings, EPI estimates ‘total wages stolen from workers due to minimum wage violations exceeds $15 billion each year,’” the National Employment Law Project reported.
People’s World
October 20, 2020
The three fields that suffered the largest job losses between February and May of this year are hospitality, retail, and “other services,” according to the Economic Policy Institute, and nearly half of all Latina workers are employed in those three. Latinas make up almost 15 percent of the workforce in hospitality, the largest of any group. Latinas also have significantly less access to paid sick leave and remote work.
HipLatina
October 20, 2020
Finding a job right now may prove challenging for many people, with nearly 7 million more unemployed workers than job openings, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CNBC
October 20, 2020
The recovery in the labor market appears to be stalling, with an estimated 661,000 jobs added in September, far below the 1.4 million jobs added in August and 1.7 million added in July. More and more of the job losses happening now are permanent — and coming at a time when extra government assistance has dried up. Last week, the number of new jobless claims filed went up.
“It’s very clear that labor market stress is far from over,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
VOX
October 20, 2020
“As soon as you start measuring differences in any outcomes for Black and white kids, you would find differences, you would find gaps,” said Emma García, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
These “opportunity gaps” can be found when comparing any nonwhite, non-Asian American student with their white or Asian American peers, García said. They can also be found when comparing different socioeconomic classes.
Many of these gaps are driven by poverty, she said. And before a Black child is even born, the odds are stacked against them.
Inside Higher Ed
October 20, 2020
Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel, “Teacher pay penalty dips but persists in 2019” (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2020)
Center for American Progress
October 20, 2020
Many unionized workers have paid sick time through a collective-bargaining agreement—according to the Economic Policy Institute, nine in ten workers who are covered by a union contract have access to paid sick days, and 97 percent of those in the public sector who have a union contract do. But as union density in the U.S. has fallen to 10.3 percent, no matter how good a sick time arrangement might be in a contract, few workers have access to them, underscoring the need for federal legislation to set a baseline.
The American Prospect
October 20, 2020
Darrick Hamilton, Ph.D., Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy; Founding Director, Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy, The New School and Valerie Wilson, Ph.D., Director, Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, Economic Policy Institute speak with Donna Wilson, Bloomberg Radio Reporter and Anchor at the Bloomberg Equality virtual briefing Covid-19 Exposed: The Quest for Equity about ways to boost income and net worth for Black and brown households
Bloomberg TV
October 20, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, “With millions of workers receiving unemployment benefits and no end in sight for the COIVD-19 pandemic, Congress must act,” Economic Policy Institute, October 1, 2020
Center for American Progress
October 20, 2020
Pursuing trade and industrial policies that boost U.S. exports and eliminate the trade deficit while investing $2 trillion over four years in the nation’s infrastructure, clean energy, and energy efficiency improvements could support 6.9 to 12.9 million “good jobs” annually by 2024, according to an analysis published Tuesday.
The new report from a trio of experts at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a U.S.-based think tank, comes as the country continues to endure the public health and economic consequences of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 220,000 lives and millions of jobs in the United States alone this year.
Common Dreams
October 20, 2020
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that the stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits together helped keep 13.2 million Americans out of poverty through June. And the number of first-time unemployment claims have hovered above 800,000 a week since March, indicating continued job loss as a result of the pandemic.
CNET
October 20, 2020
A 2019 study by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute concluded that the manufacturing sector creates more indirect and supporting jobs than most other sectors.
On average, adding 100 manufacturing jobs to a community generates enough new employee discretionary spending and firm expansion expenditures to create 289 additional jobs in other sectors, such as retail stores, restaurants, construction companies, service firms, logistics support and other “Main Street” businesses that rely upon the wealth and activity that manufacturing generates.
Pocono Record
October 20, 2020
A report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that while jobs filled by women represented 50 percent of payroll employment in February 2020, positions held by women represented nearly 59 percent of job losses in March. In the hospitality industry, women make up 52 percent of the workforce but accounted for 54 percent of job losses.
Nevada Independent
October 20, 2020
Also, from day one, according to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, of 50 of the most egregious actions Trump has actually rolled back worker protections and rights. This includes preventing workers from earning overtime, attempting to take away workers health care, and stacking agencies and the Supreme Court with anti-worker appointees. The “America first” rhetoric and the attacks on immigrants, it’s really just a racist shield that enthralls Trump’s base by signaling that he will end immigration from non-white countries.
The Intercept Podcast
October 19, 2020
More than 2.4 million workers had been unemployed for at least six months as of September, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Labor Department. It’s the most people mired in long-term joblessness since 2015 and a huge increase of 781,000 from the month before.
“It’s the biggest increase in long-term unemployment we’ve ever seen,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist now with the Economic Policy Institute think tank.
Huffpost
October 19, 2020
Latina woman were employed in jobs that they were not able to do remotely so when those industries were hit by COVID-19 in the shutdowns they completely lost those jobs as opposed to being able to just continue working but doing so from home. That’s Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute.
NPR
October 19, 2020
Daniel Costa, director de investigación legal de inmigración en el Instituto de Políticas Económicas, con sede en Washington, dijo que Estados Unidos se beneficia de los trabajadores calificados extranjeros, pero que igual hace falta hacer ciertas reformas.
“Tu puedes traer legalmente a un trabajador por menos de lo que cuesta un trabajador en esta área”, dijo Costa. “Las compañías harán lo que sea mejor para sus resultados y sus ganancias”.
Costa fue coautor de un reciente reporte que muestra que el 60 por ciento de los puestos H-1B certificados por el Departamento del Trabajo tienen “asignados niveles de salarios muy por debajo del promedio local por esa ocupación”, agregando que pasar nuevas leyes es la “más sencilla y simple solución” para reformar el programa de trabajadores extranjeros temporales.
Voice of America
October 19, 2020
The nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute recently produced a report detailing “the Trump administration’s 50 most egregious attacks on working people.” The head of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups and labor unions, deemed Trump “the most anti-worker and anti-environment president of our lifetime.”
National Catholic Reporter
October 19, 2020
Fully funding the country’s water-system needs could create 800,000 jobs and expand GDP by $4.5 trillion over 20 years, according to a report from the ASCE. A 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) concluded that spending at any level would create short-term increases in employment and economic activity, with more benefits tied to bigger investments.
Capital and Main
October 19, 2020
San Francisco Chronicle
October 19, 2020
Teresa Ghilarducci is the Schwartz Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research. She’s the co-author of “Rescuing Retirement” and a member of the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
October 19, 2020
First, unemployment figures themselves are notorious for lowballing real rates of joblessness, and these problems have been exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis. Heidi Shierholz from the Economic Policy Institute argues that the official unemployment number, 13.6 million, is a severe undercount. A very conservative estimate should count at least 21.5 million jobless workers, millions of whom are not considered officially “unemployed” because they are classified as “discouraged” and have dropped out of the labor force. That figure would translate to a more accurate (but still conservative) unemployment rate of 12.5 percent. This does not include another 11.5 million who have had their hours and pay cut as a result of the pandemic.
Jacobin
October 19, 2020
A more recent report from researchers at management consulting firm A.T. Kearney found that Trump’s trade policies — including tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada and the European Union — pushed manufacturing away from China. But it also found those jobs went to other Asian countries like Vietnam that provide services at lower costs, rather than the United States. The Economic Policy Institute has found that Trump failed to reverse years of offshoring with his trade policies.
Bridge Michigan
October 19, 2020
A report published earlier this year by Hira and Daniel Costa, an immigration law expert at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, concluded that major U.S. firms, including Silicon Valley technology giants, “take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage.”
Some H-1B workers receive more than the minimums, Hira noted. Hardest hit by the new rules will be firms that pay H-1B employees at or near the minimums, he said. Hira expects the wage change to usher in a higher-skilled H-1B workforce that will complement American workers without pushing compensation down.
East Bay Times
October 19, 2020
While inequity – long rooted in race, segregation and socioeconomics – has plagued education for decades, experts fear the problem has grown worse during the eight months since the pandemic began and shifted learning online.
“These gaps are not new in the U.S. education system,” said Emma Garcia, education economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “This is something we have lived with for a very long time because we failed to fix the system.”
Buffalo News
October 19, 2020
But a new report by the Economic Policy Institute gives us a closer look at just how much of a mess things are for Gen Z in particular. For people between the ages of 16 to 24, unemployment was around 24.4% this past spring, hitting a high of 26.9% in April. As of September, youth unemployment remains elevated far above the rate for the general population. For those between 16 to 19, it was 15.9% last month, and for those between 20 to 24, it was 12.5%. The national unemployment rate in September was 7.9%.
Refinery29
October 19, 2020