Media clips

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• South Carolina, Montana declining federal unemployment funds ‘a huge mistake,’ economists say

  South Carolina and Montana residents will be cut off from federal pandemic unemployment benefits next month, with Republican governors in each state claiming the payments have led to a workforce shortage. Economists say that’s not the case.

  “Employers are just angry that they are unable to find workers at relatively low wages,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an interview. “The jobs being posted are more stressful, more risky, harder jobs than they were pre-COVID. … When the job is more stressful, then it should command a higher wage.”

  …

  Shierholz told ABC News that after the $600 bonus on unemployment expired at the end of July, “You should have seen a bump up in employment, and you can’t see that in the data so it just points to that it wasn’t really causing the labor supply effect. It’s just difficult to imagine that something half that big is having any effect now.”

  But a report from the Economic Policy Institute shows that a more likely reason some employers aren’t attracting workers is that many of these businesses are offering too-low wages. In a true labor shortage, the report states, wages will rise as does competition among employers. But wages aren’t growing — at least not quickly enough.

  ABC News May 10, 2021
• The U.S. Jobs Report Was A Surprise: Elise Gould

  Friday’s jobs report from the Labor Department showed the U.S. added 266,000 jobs in April, far short of the 1 million gain economists had forecast. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, talks with Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick and Joe Weisenthal on “What’d You Miss?” about the growing pains as the economy rapidly reopens.

  Bloomberg TV May 10, 2021
• The jobs market is slowly recovering, but not so much for women and women of color

  Valerie Wilson: Child care responsibilities disproportionately fall on women. And so at a time when everyone was home, children and parents, women clearly took on more of those responsibilities, but they took on those responsibilities at the same time that they would usually be working. So there was some difficult tradeoffs.

  PBS Newshour May 10, 2021
• Biden Administration to Name Thea Lee to Top Labor Department Post

  The Biden administration plans to name Thea Lee, a former AFL-CIO trade official, to head the Labor Department’s international affairs division, according to people familiar with the appointment.

  Ms. Lee, who most recently served as president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank that often critiques free trade policies, is slated to become the deputy undersecretary for international labor affairs. In that job, she will oversee the bureau that investigates labor rights, forced labor and child trafficking around the globe.

  Wall Street Journal May 10, 2021
• Black Americans are still being left behind in the US job market recovery

  Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said he’s encouraged by the Fed’s increased focus on unemployment and higher tolerance for inflation. “In the past there have been Fed chairs who have been overly wary of inflation and they’ve often tried to fight it at the expense of employment,” he says. “That has disproportionately fallen on Black workers.”

  Quartz May 7, 2021
• Mothers see signs of economic hope after a year of stress

  “Employers have the ability to set the terms of the contract,” said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

  “They’re really holding all the cards. They have all the leverage,” Gould said.

  Gould noted that the country was still down 8.4 million jobs in March from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The economy had been steadily adding jobs before the virus left millions out of work, she said, so theoretically the jobs shortfall is even higher, perhaps as high as 11 million.

  Detroit Free Press May 7, 2021
• Spring Letdown: Hiring Slows In April, Raising New Challenges For Economy

  “We are certainly not seeing rapid wage growth that would really be the red flag of ‘Wow, things are tight. Employers truly on a really widespread basis can’t find the workers that they need,’” Shierholz said.

  NPR May 7, 2021
• The PRO Act: What’s in It and Why Is It a Labor Movement Priority?

  Frustratingly for those who want to organize, some union-busting activities are legal under current federal labor law; others are forbidden, but the penalties are light enough that many employers decide to do it anyway. The Economic Policy Institute estimated in 2019 that 41.5% of employers in all union election campaigns are charged with violating federal labor laws, and RWDSU believes that’s exactly what Amazon did in Bessemer.

  Teen Vogue May 7, 2021
• Many employers want to hire — now. Many workers aren’t ready to go back.

  There’s another mismatch, said Heidi Shierholz at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, between the pay employers are offering and the pay workers are willing to take.

  “If an employer posts a job and then they can’t find the workers that they need, that just means there’s a labor shortage of people who will work at that wage,” she said.

  In a really tight labor market, as Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell recently pointed out, wages would be rising.

  NPR Marketplace May 7, 2021
• One year into the pandemic, millions of jobs are still missing

  The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said nearly 3 million more jobs would have been added if the current pre-pandemic pace of job creation had continued uninterrupted. Starting from a February 2020 baseline of roughly 152.5 million jobs, the U.S. would have just over 155.1 million jobs as of last month. The actual total is roughly 144.1 million.

  NBC News May 7, 2021