And they’re refusing to work in shit conditions. The Economic Policy Institute points out that many of the people screeching about worker shortages are restaurant owners. Lots of the businesses struggling to attract workers in Ohio and South Carolina come from the restaurant and hospitality sectors. These business owners are trying to find workers at the same wages they paid pre-pandemic.
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Workers exist for these jobs. UE reports that when Klavon’s Ice Cream, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, raised their wages to $15 an hour, they were “flooded with applicants.” As the Economic Policy Institute says, in a labor market as complex as America’s, there will always be pockets of worker shortages. But right now, “Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage… whenever anyone says, ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ‘at the wages I want to pay.’”
Scary Mommy
July 12, 2021
Over 200,000 workers will see their paychecks grow, according to an estimate by Ben Zipperer of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Of the workers who will benefit, most are women, according to Zipperer; Black and Hispanic workers will see the largest hikes.
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Workers who earn above the minimum wage will likely also benefit from hikes, according to Zipperer. They’ll feel “ripple” effects as their employers adjust pay internally, and could see their own wages increase.
Insider
July 12, 2021
As the U.S. economy (and our favorite eateries) reopen, many restaurants are facing a service worker shortage. Saying goodbye to the tipping model could be just the solution, said David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think [the pandemic] has rightly forced us into this sort of rethinking about job quality and what workers should expect. And that’s created the scenario we’re in now, where employers are struggling to fill these jobs because, generally, they’re just low-quality jobs,” he said.
Cooper added that the stressors of pandemic-era serving, including having to police mask-wearing or social distancing, as well as the risks of working an in-person job, added more to the plates of low-paid service workers.
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But if the service industry wants to recruit and retain employees, Spriggs and Cooper believe it has to re-evaluate the gratuity model that allows customers to determine the total pay of their employees.
Marketplace
July 12, 2021
Low-wage workers in general were struck most severely by the current recession, as less than 75% of low-wage workers were still working in 2020 as opposed to 95 percent of high-wage earners (or those in the top 25 percent of wage distribution), according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan policy think tank.
Yahoo Finance
July 12, 2021
But, “there really isn’t any evidence of widespread labor shortage,” said Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute.
If there were, Wilson said, employers would be jacking up wages across the board to entice unemployed workers. Instead, there are some pockets of wage acceleration, “in leisure and hospitality. A big boost in those wages is the fact that they’re getting more tips now because more people are coming to those restaurants in person.”
Marketplace
July 12, 2021
“Returning workers are earning more (as they should) – nominal hourly earnings of production non-supervisory workers are up 3.67% over this time last year,” tweeted Valerie Wilson, an economist at the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Al Jazeera
July 12, 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—labor demand is still the problem,” tweeted Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The Hill
July 12, 2021
Payroll growth over the last three months in the US has been ‘huge’, says Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (and former chief economist at the Department of Labor)
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Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 850,000 in June, following increases of 583,000 in May and 269,000, today’s report shows – or around 1.7 million new jobs.
Shierholz also points out that the recovery is much faster than after the financial crisis — but doesn’t see worrying signs in the wage data:
The Guardian
July 12, 2021
We are in the midst of a teacher shortage crisis. The Economic Policy Institute’s final report in their series, “Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market,” noted only 30 percent of teachers report feeling they have the power to select instructional materials, topics, or skills to be taught in their classrooms. The authors suggest public policy “ensure[s] that teachers have a say in the curriculum they teach, the classroom practices they follow, and the materials they use.” Federal protection of academic freedom does that; state bans do the opposite.
Newsweek
July 12, 2021
Facts like this: Between 1979 and 2019, the Economic Policy Institute reported this past December, the bottom 90 percent of American paychecks barely annually increased at all. In effect, EPI observes, wages for the bottom 90 percent have been “continuously redistributed upwards” — “frequently” to the top 1 and 0.1 percent.
Inequality.org
July 12, 2021