“Right now we’re about 1.6 million jobs below where we were in February 2020,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She said the U.S. working-age population did grow during the pandemic.
Marketplace
April 13, 2022
“Unions also reduce racial disparities in wages and raise women’s wages, helping to counteract disparate labour market outcomes by race and gender that result from occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labour market inequities related to structural racism and sexism,” said a 2021 fact sheet from the U.S.-based Economic Policy Institute.
Toronto Star
April 13, 2022
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama, told Fortune the labor market has seen “mind-bogglingly fast and sustained growth” that is “totally unlike the Great Recession and its aftermath.”
Fortune
April 13, 2022
“We have torn back toward normal at a really fast pace, and it would be unrealistic to think that could continue,” said Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. Even slower wage growth, he said, wouldn’t worry him, as long as pay increases didn’t fall further behind inflation.
The New York Times
April 13, 2022
Heidi Sheirholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, explained in a Twitter thread that the U.S. economy is currently “on pace to recover nearly eight years faster” from the high unemployment rates created by the COVID-19 pandemic than it did from the Great Recession. This is in part due to Congress acting to provide COVID-19 relief, including the CARES Act and American Rescue Plan, Shierholz said.
Verify This
April 8, 2022
Studies show that if the overall unemployment rate drops low enough, “even those gaps start to erode a little bit,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
Marketplace
April 8, 2022
“When inflation is not a problem, then it’s much easier to say, ‘We’re going to maximize employment and see how far we can take this,’ ” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy. “But with inflation in the mix, they’re in a position now where they can’t really ignore that.”
Associated Press
April 1, 2022
“Overall employment is now just 1% from its pre-pandemic level,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, tweeted. “Private-sector jobs record strong gains rising 426,000 in March with notable jobs added in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and retail trade. Public-sector employment still slow to return.”
U.S. News & World Report
April 1, 2022
Harris was former acting and deputy labor secretary during the Obama administration, and in a 2015 paper on the gig economy, he called for a new “independent worker” classification for on-demand app workers. These “independent workers” wouldn’t be independent contractors or employees, and would qualify for collective bargaining rights but not hours-based benefits, including overtime or minimum wages—a proposal that drew criticism from the AFL-CIO and the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg Law
April 1, 2022