Since 1972, the Black unemployment rate has always been higher than mainstream America, Ryan reports. However, according to Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, “The white unemployment rate is now lower than the Black unemployment rate has ever been.”
The Grio
March 18, 2022
“There was a time when really high oil price inflation could’ve tipped us into a recession by clamping down on household spending,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute. “But our oil extraction sector is pretty huge now… and they generate a ton of domestic profit now.”
Quartz
March 18, 2022
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said it wasn’t just closures but uncertainties around school and daycare reopenings. This uncertainty, Gould said, especially impacted moms and parents with young kids. Moms were also more likely than fathers to be in jobs hard hit by pandemic-related closures early on in the pandemic, according to a Census post.
Business Insider
March 18, 2022
Then there are wages. After organizing efforts shifted into high gear, Starbucks announced that it was making “historic investments in its partners,” including raising the wage floor to $15 an hour by this coming summer. However, $15 is what activists called a “living wage” in 2012, and it’s what Amazon started paying fulfillment-center workers back in 2018. The MIT Living Wage Calculator says that a single adult needs to earn at least $20 an hour to meet today’s minimum standard of living in New York City, $23 in the Bay Area, and $19 in Seattle. To sustain themselves in America’s most affordable county (Orangeburg, South Carolina), workers need to earn at least $14.50 an hour, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s latest Family Budget Calculator.
Fast Company
March 18, 2022
Heidi Sheirholz, who leads the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the legislation is “a core reason we’re in such an incredibly strong recovery right now.”
Associated Press
March 18, 2022
However, others define a livable wage differently. The Economic Policy Institute’s “Family Budget Calculator” says the income needed for a “modest yet adequate standard of living” is $45,517 a year, or nearly $22 per hour. With Boulder defining a living wage as “an amount intended to help people meet basic living needs and maintain or achieve self-sufficiency,” its 2020 budget increases the minimum living wage for its employees to $17.42 per hour.
Daily Camera
March 18, 2022
“It is about making sure that you have kind of a captive workforce,” said Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute. “Your workforce can’t go anywhere else, and then you actually have to pay them less to keep them because they don’t have outside options.”
The Denver Channel
March 18, 2022
At the same time, the gap has remained relatively unchanged over the past three decades. From 1979 to 1994, it fell from 37.7% to about 23%, the Economic Policy Institute found. But it has not improved much since, even as women have made great gains in educational attainment – going from less likely having a college or advanced degree compared to men – to surpassing men in education. Women with advanced degrees are paid less on average than men with bachelor’s degrees, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CBS News
March 18, 2022
According to the Economic Policy Institute’s updated Family Budget Calculator, a full-time worker with no children would need to make roughly $14.50 an hour to sustain themselves in the US county with the lowest cost of living: Orangeburg County, South Carolina.
Business Insider
March 18, 2022