“It seems like something that was completely misguided and not supported by the facts or the evidence at all,” said Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “There were a lot of inaccurate comparisons and conclusions drawn.”
“I think the idea of wanting to cut benefits early is more a political point than one that is justified by the economic data,” Wilson added. “With the latest report, we’re on track for the recovery to remain strong and vibrant, and I just don’t think it’s a very wise decision to do anything to hinder that at this point. Those benefits are important for families and contributing to the demand that is needed for job growth to continue. By cutting those prematurely, you risk cutting the recovery short or at least hindering it.”
Yahoo News
July 9, 2021
The forthcoming order will direct the Federal Trade Commission to restrict and potentially bar so-called noncompete agreements, which have stopped workers in industries including fast food and Big Tech from going to other employers for higher pay. A 2019 analysis by the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that 36 million to 60 million workers could be subject to noncompete agreements.
ABC News
July 9, 2021
Caroline Hyde & Joe Weisenthal bring the news and analysis you may have missed after the closing bell on Wall Street. Today’s show tackles the jobs report and the Boston Pops 4th of July Spectacular Guests Today: Valerie Wilson of the Economic Policy Institute, Daniel Yanisse of Checkr, Keith Lockhart of the Boston Pops (Source: Bloomberg)
Bloomberg TV
July 9, 2021
The U.S. added 850,000 jobs in June, “far surpassing expectations” and putting the country on pace to reach pre-pandemic levels of health by “the end of 2022,” per The Wall Street Journal and the Economic Policy Institute. Average growth over the last three months came in at 567,000, and unemployment changed little, up to 5.9 percent from 5.8 percent.
The Week
July 9, 2021
But, as Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama administration economist and now director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out on Twitter, wages for workers in leisure and hospitality “plummeted” last year during the recession, so even with the strong wage growth in those sectors this year, wages are not that much higher than if the pandemic had never happened.
“Over the last three months, leisure & hospitality has added 977,000 jobs—well over half of the 1.7 million total jobs added over that period,” Shierholz wrote. She added that these numbers “are just not signaling a big labor shortage.”
Business Insider
July 9, 2021
Government followed behind leisure and hospitality with 188,000 jobs added last month. Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Twitter specifically about state and local government job gains, which added 193,000 jobs together.
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Shierholz wrote it is “crucial” that these governments “use their ARP funds to refill those jobs” because there are still around 1 million fewer state and local government jobs in June than before the pandemic.
Business Insider
July 9, 2021
“It’s been a dozen years since Congress raised the national minimum wage, so the lowest-paid workers in the U.S. economy have seen an 18% pay cut as the cost of living went up over that time period,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Yahoo Finance. “Congressional inaction is why places like Delaware, Florida, and more than two dozen other states have increased their minimum wage in the last several years.”
Yahoo Finance
July 9, 2021
“Unemployment insurance is not going to solve care problems. It’s not going to solve health concerns,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist and director of policy for the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. “Cutting [unemployment insurance] is not going to have a huge effect on the labor shortages.”
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
July 9, 2021
“Many people who lost jobs at the start of the pandemic have been unemployed ever since. As jobs come back they will get work but there is still a big jobs deficit,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the left-learning Economic Policy Institute, in a Twitter thread.
The Hill
July 9, 2021
Dr Valerie Wilson, the director of Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (Pree), warned against treating any one month’s report with too much importance, “The caveat is that subsequent revisions or updates to the numbers could always change what that story is. We always know more in retrospect than we do in any at any single point.”
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These differences, of course, have been entrenched throughout US history. In particular, Wilson is concerned with “occupational segregation”, which has historically meant that Black and brown workers are disproportionately represented in some industries and not others.
“For example, we know that women – women of color in particular – are more likely to be in low-wage service and those industries are hit extremely hard during a recession,” she said.
Industries, such as leisure and hospitality, continue to falter in regaining their pre-pandemic rates of unemployment.
The Guardian
July 9, 2021