In the wake of the mass unemployment caused by the pandemic, several organizations, including the Economic Policy Institute and National Employment Law Project, created a report with unemployed workers outlining reforms needed to fix the widespread issues to unemployment insurance that were exposed by Covid-19.
The Guardian
July 23, 2021
From 1979 to 2019, wages for the lowest-paid decile of workers rose 3.3% when adjusted for inflation, while wages for the top 5% of workers rose 63.2%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Over that time, as middle-class jobs were automated or sent overseas, and as more people vied for what was left in the wake of the 2001 and 2007–2009 recessions, employers had the upper hand. By one estimate, 53 million people—around 44% of U.S. workers— were low-wage before the pandemic, making an average of $10.22 an hour.
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That’s the result of four decades of declining union power and a stagnant minimum wage. “The idea that any short-run shortages that do exist would undo 40 years of employers’ ability to suppress wages—it just does not ring true whatsoever,” says Heidi Shierholz, a former Obama Administration economist who works at the Economic Policy Institute.
Time
July 23, 2021
Meanwhile, bosses of other companies will use Dimon’s riches to argue that the market price for their own talent has just gone up. Chief executive pay already grew 16% in 2020, the Economic Policy Institute found in May. America’s corporate elite continues to pull itself up by the bootstraps.
Reuters
July 23, 2021
Meanwhile, 2019 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank created to address the needs of low- and middle-income workers, recognized some economic benefits of Airbnbs but concluded that those benefits do not outweigh the costs to local jurisdictions in the form of tax revenue and potentially higher housing costs for local residents if enough properties for long-term housing were converted to short-term accommodations. The analysis also concluded that those benefiting from short-term rentals were disproportionately white and high-wealth households.
Albany Times Union
July 23, 2021
By the way: Farmworkers continued to make less in 2020 than workers with even minimal education, the Economic Policy Institute says in an analysis of wage data. Ag workers made $14.62 per hour on average, and H-2A workers made less — $13.68 per hour, writes EPI’s director of Immigration Law and Policy Research, Daniel Costa.
Agri-Pulse
July 23, 2021
Might this be just a flash in the pan? Heidi Shierholz, who was also a chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration and is now director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, is skeptical that the job market is breaking with its decades-long trend of wage stagnation at the bottom and lavish rewards at the top.
“How much of what this captures is just a trampoline effect?” she wondered. “The jobs that come back tend to look like the jobs that were lost.” After the dust settles and the employment holes created by the pandemic in several industries fill up, the deal offered to workers might look much like it did before the pandemic.
Ultimately, “we are stuck in a world where labor is very cheap and we don’t expect much from it,” Ms. Stevenson said. “I don’t see this pandemic fundamentally reshaping that.” Ms. Shierholz put it this way: “There has not been any fundamental restructuring of power in the economy.”
New York Times
July 23, 2021
Last year, Uber claimed that drivers in cities like Denver and Washington, D.C., make $55,000 annually, however multiple independent studies disputed the figure. Economist Larry Mishel called the estimate “phony-baloney,” saying that it doesn’t account for out-of-pocket costs like gas and vehicle maintenance.
CBS Moneywatch
July 23, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told Insider that ending benefits early is a “massive mistake” and doesn’t make any “economic sense.”
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“We still have a weak labor market,” Shierholz said. “People are depending on those benefits, and they’re injecting a ton of federal cash dollars into those states.”
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Some governors of the states that have cut the benefits early have cited labor shortages and are aiming to get workers back into the labor force, but Shierholz said labor shortages are isolated.
Business Insider
July 23, 2021
According to a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 31.8% of private-sector businesses that responded to EPI’s survey (a total of 634 respondents were surveyed) reported that all of their employees had to sign a non-compete agreement, regardless of their job duties or compensation. And of the respondents that had an average wage of less than $13.00, 29% of them required all their workers to enter into non-compete agreements.
Forbes
July 23, 2021
If adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage should have already exceeded $15, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The group has reported that the minimum wage would have been set at $21.69 in 2020 and $23.53 by 2025 if it kept pace with economic gains; instead, $7.25 is worth 30 per cent less than was 50 years ago.
The Independent
July 23, 2021