“This will cut aid to nearly four million impacted workers, despite the absence of compelling evidence that jobless benefits are causing problems in the labor market,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, argued in a recent New York Times op-ed.
“Instead, we have considerable evidence that it is helpful.”
CNBC
June 11, 2021
We start the hour talking with ProPublica’s JESSE EISINGER, an author on “The Secret IRS Files” report, about what they found, how the rich avoid paying their fair share, and what it reveals about inequities in our tax code. Then, we examine the uneven economic recovery and the pandemic’s impact on income inequality and the racial wealth gap. Our guest is VALERIE WILSON from the Economic Policy Institute.
WHYY
June 11, 2021
Walsh can continue his overtures to Republicans to minimize adversarial exchanges, but Democratic members losing patience with GOP opposition to Biden’s jobs and social-policy agenda want the secretary to make a difference in the policy arena—even if that means abandoning the niceties.
“I would hope that the Education and Labor Committee pushes for a proactive agenda that the secretary is committed to and political capital is spent around accomplishing,” said Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute. “Because as we emerge from the pandemic, if changes aren’t made to our workplace system of rights, then we know what type of recovery we will have—an unequal recovery where workers will pay a price.”
Bloomberg Law
June 11, 2021
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute highlighted another factor that’s driving wages up: More tipping at restaurants and bars, as customers return.
If that’s a large contributor to wage increases, then pressures should ease once restaurants reach full capacity, according to Josh Bivens, EPI’s director of research.
“So long as the industries that are seeing the really rapid wage growth are also the ones seeing really rapid employment growth, that actually doesn’t strike me as a shortage,” he said. “That strikes me as how economies adjust to a big increase in demand.”
Bloomberg
June 11, 2021
A report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that “nearly all the states cutting UI still have significantly fewer jobs than before the pandemic.” In Texas, for instance, nearly one million workers are “officially unemployed,” meaning that they’re actively looking for work but haven’t had luck yet.
Business Insider
June 11, 2021
Broadly, 7.9 million workers said that they were not able to work because their work closed or lost business due to the pandemic. A recent report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that Black and Hispanic workers were less likely to be able to telework compared to white peers.
Business Insider
June 11, 2021
The lower teen unemployment rate is “not unequivocally great news,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
For one thing, the amount of people in this group seeking work actually slipped slightly from April to May. Some job seekers might not be seeing opportunities and leaving the workforce altogether, she said.
MarketWatch
June 11, 2021
U.S. job growth picked up in May — along with worker pay — and the unemployment rate fell, signaling firms are making some progress filling a record number of openings as the economy powers up. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, talks with Bloomberg’s Romaine Bostick, Alix Steel and Joe Weisenthal on “What’d You Miss?” about the U.S. jobs report.
Bloomberg TV
June 11, 2021
Low-wage, low-hour workers were among the hardest hit during the pandemic, as 80% of job losses were among the lowest quarter of wage earners in the US, with leisure and hospitality sector the hardest hit and currently the industry facing the largest job shortfall, with 3.5m fewer jobs in February compared with the same month last year, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
June 11, 2021
Although the job gains are welcome news for working people, analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows that even if current monthly employment gains continue, the country won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until well into 2022.
Analyzing the latest numbers, EPI senior economist Elise Gould said that officially the labor market is still down 7.6 million jobs since February 2020 when the coronavirus crisis started. But taking into account the growth in the working-age population since then, the real jobs shortfall is still between 8.6 and 10.7 million.
The jobs recovery remains very uneven by race. For white workers, the official rate is 5.1%, close to the national average. For workers of color, the number of people still out of work is considerably higher: 7.3% for Latinx, 5.5% for Asian Americans, and 9.1% for Black workers. EPI economist Heidi Shierholz said Friday that the numbers show how “our history of and present systemic racism hugely affect the labor market.”
People’s World
June 11, 2021