Media clips

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• Businesses really don’t want to fire anyone right now — but workers are quitting more than ever

  Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider that this isn’t a “damaging” labor shortage — hiring was still up in industries like leisure and hospitality as pay went up, showing that growing wages might be the key to getting workers back.

  Business Insider August 13, 2021
• Wall Street Splashes Cash on Junior Bankers

  In late 2018, there were 1.5 million more available jobs than there were Americans looking for work. Right now, with 9.5 million Americans out of work, that difference is 600,000. But as Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute pointed out, if you consider people without jobs not actively looking for work, who are not counted as part of the official unemployed, the ranks of the jobless far out number open positions.

  New York Times August 13, 2021
• Why Is the American Education System So Expensive?

  Parents first experience the heavy burden of tuition costs when they enroll their child in preschool. The average cost of child care, which includes early education, is more than $8,000 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute — a figure which exceeds the in-state tuition for public universities in many U.S. states.

  GO Banking Rates (via Yahoo! Finance) August 13, 2021
• CEOs got paid 351 times what typical workers made in 2020

  A new report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, authored by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra, finds that CEO compensation has grown by 1,322% between 1978 and 2020.

  In contrast, the report finds that the typical worker saw their compensation grow by just 18% during that time period. 

  That could also be seen in the discrepancy between CEO and worker pay, which was 351-to-1 in 2020. While the authors note that the CEO to worker compensation ratio peaked in 2000 at 366-to-1, it’s still higher than any time from the 1960’s through the 1990’s. 

  They used a “realized” measure for compensation, which accounts for stock awards when they were vested, and stock options when they were cashed in. Under the “granted” measure, which values compensation plans based on when stock packages were granted, compensation was slightly lower.

  Inequality between CEOs and everyone else even extends to the top. The report also looks at CEO compensation in comparison to the earnings of the top 0.1% of earners. The authors found that CEO compensation was 6.44 times higher than what those in the top 0.1% made in 2019, based on the most recently available tax data from the IRS.

  “The CEOs are in a different stratosphere,” Mishel told Insider, adding: “It’s not just that the CEOs are so-called highly skilled or highly educated, they’ve done far better than the average earner who’s very highly skilled in the top one-thousandth, or very highly educated.”

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  Mishel said that he thinks unemployment will continue to drop substantially by the end of 2022. 

  “I think the pressure on employers to improve wages and benefits will continue,” Mishel said. He said that Biden administration policies addressing labor standards — like raising the minimum wage and improving collective bargaining — could also contribute to a greater shift. 

  “If those are able to be enacted it’ll reinforce a shift in power towards workers, which is something they desperately need — because they’ve been on the losing end for four decades.”
  Business Insider August 13, 2021
• This is a first: The US has 10 million job openings

  The uptick in the quits rate is likely due “in part to increased opportunities for workers to find better job matches, potentially with higher wages or safer working conditions in the lingering pandemic,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in a tweet.

  CNN Business August 13, 2021
• Report Finds CEO Compensation at Large Companies Increased by Nearly 19 Percent in 2020

  CEOs at the top 350 companies in 2020 made an average $24.2 million, a 18.9% jump, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  The report also found that CEO compensation has increased an astounding 1,322% since 1978. From 1978-2020, the pay for an average worker only increased 18.0%.

  Complex August 13, 2021
• Kansas City child care options dwindle amid program closures and staff shortages

  In Missouri and Kansas, infant care costs more than in-state tuition for four-year public college, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. The average annual cost of infant care in Missouri is just over $10,000. In Kansas, it’s $11,222. Infant care for one child takes up 17% and 18% of a median family’s income in Missouri and Kansas respectively.

  Kansas City Star August 13, 2021
• Job openings hit record high, with 10.1 million openings

  However, that most frequently used unemployment figure leaves out millions of people who are jobless but not actively job-searching. According to Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, the true count of the unemployed in July was over 13 million.

  CBS Moneywatch August 13, 2021
• The July jobs report ends the myth of a ‘damaging’ labor shortage, former Obama economist says

  Heidi Shierholz, who is currently the director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the employment and wages figures unveiled in Friday’s data show that reports of a labor shortage still aren’t right. Or, she said, it’s not a labor shortage we should be worried about.

  “A concerning labor shortage would be very tight, strong wage growth that is not accompanied by strong job growth. That’s a bona fide labor shortage,” Shierholz said. When wage growth isn’t accompanied by accelerating job growth, that’s when we should get worried — and that’s not what’s happening here.

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  “Are we seeing labor shortages that are really hurting us? I don’t see any evidence of that,” Shierholz said.

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  “There are always pockets, there are always places where people can’t find the workers they need,” Shierholz said. But it’s not widespread enough to be a core dynamic in the labor market.

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  Shierholz, for her part, said she doesn’t think those elevated wages will stick around.

  “In low-wage industries, it’s even actually easier for employers to quote unquote ‘cut wages,’ without giving anyone an actual pay cut, because there’s a lot of turnover in industry,” she said. “That does make it easier to bring new people in at a lower level and sort of make the adjustment over time.”

  Business Insider August 13, 2021
• July US jobs report shows growth – but these industries are slow to recover

  Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), noted that while the recent wage growth does suggest that the leisure and hospitality and retail industries are facing a tighter labor market, there is little reason to think that this applies to other industries, or even that the wage growth from recent months will be permanent.

  “I think it’s much more likely that when we do have the pandemic in the rearview mirror and this temporary leverage that workers have goes away, we will see employers freezing wages to eat back some of the gains that workers made at this point,” she said.

  The EPI’s own research has suggested the decades of low wage growth is at least in part due to the declining unionization rates in the US.

  The Guardian August 13, 2021