Media clips

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• Opinion: Biden isn’t pursuing socialism. He’s just trying to catch up with other wealthy democracies.

  The Economic Policy Institute notes that income inequality in the United States has been worsening for years: “From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5%. … In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.” Our level of income inequality is now closer to that of developing countries in Africa and Latin American than to our European allies.

  The Washington Post May 7, 2021
• Is Unemployment Insurance Behind the Fast-Food Labor Shortage?

  But are unemployment payments the culprit here? “It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as a real driving factor,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “There is basically a lever employers can pull if they truly are facing a labor shortage of some kind: They can pay more to either attract new workers into the labor force or poach workers who are already in the labor force.”

  Shierholz noted there have yet to be signs of significant wage growth in the industries where workers are purported to be in severe shortage, and that previous data during the pandemic and the 2008 economic recession demonstrated that expanded unemployment benefits had minimal to no impact on whether workers returned to work.

  The American Prospect May 7, 2021
• Montana to end expanded jobless benefits in June, offer return-to-work bonuses

  “There are lots of anecdotal reports swirling around about employers who can’t find workers,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a Tuesday op-ed. “But a closer look reveals there may be a lot less to this than meets the eye.”

  Shierholz said that while there may be bona fide labor shortages in some pockets of the country, there are still too few jobs for too many unemployed workers.

  “In the latest data on job openings, there were nearly 40 percent more unemployed workers than job openings overall, and more than 80 percent more unemployed workers than job openings in the leisure and hospitality sector,” she said.

  She added that those businesses should raise wages to attract more workers, particularly because service jobs “are inherently more stressful and potentially dangerous because workers now have to deal with anti-maskers and ongoing health concerns.”

  The Hill May 7, 2021
• CSPAN

  There is not a lot of young people looking to work in agriculture. it is very physically demanding. there is also a study that addresses the question–the cost of the food. The study found increasing wages to farmworkers by 40% would only cost consumers $25 the entire year. That study was done by an agricultural economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  C-SPAN May 7, 2021
• Biden’s great economic rebalancing

  In 1995, more than a quarter century ago, I published a piece in The New Yorker that ran under the headline “Who Killed the Middle Class?” It was hardly a pathbreaking question. Even then, wage stagnation, rising inequality, and a fixation on cutting taxes and balancing the budget deficit were well-established trends. Among the sources I relied on was “The State of Working America,” a data-rich annual report that was, and still is, published by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. The economist Jared Bernstein, one of the authors of the report, went on to work for Biden in the Obama Administration, and has now joined the Biden Administration, as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

  The New Yorker May 7, 2021
• Is it over yet? Still no recession end date as U.S. economy hums along

  “I definitely think it’s over,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on labor issues. Even with the existing gap in employment of about 8.5 million jobs missing from before the pandemic, the committee “might even date its end in June or July of last year.”

  “The real open question is when we move from ‘recovery’ – getting back to pre-recession levels – and move into ‘expansion’.”

  Reuters May 7, 2021
• Washington must confront the ‘Amazon economy’

  If Amazon has a legacy, it is the growing monopoly of power in the marketplace — all fueled by ever-increasing campaign contributions aiding both e-commerce giants and multinational entities. To balance the equation, Washington must stand up for labor rights, voting equity, government investment, job creation and the importance of small businesses. Otherwise, America’s workers will become increasingly impoverished and disenfranchised.

  The Hill May 7, 2021
• Elise Gould testimony for U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

  Our second witness is from the Economic Policy Institute. They are an economist who focuses on labor market trends, wages, and poverty in the United States. She has examined how the covid-19 pandemic is affecting the labor force and in particular, older workers. I want to thank her for being with us today and for sharing her expertise with the committee.

  C-SPAN May 7, 2021
• Biden’s first 100 days are a big break with the Reagan legacy. He says jobs and families need an active state.

  Biden’s plans amount to a massive gamble that Democratic efforts to double down on government redistribution of wealth and resources won’t trigger a backlash. Elise Gould, economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the pandemic revealed “a tale of two economies,” starting with the substantially higher infection and death rates of Black, Latino, and Asian people in the US compared with Whites.

  “Just the sheer numbers of people who have died and gotten seriously ill and seeing the disparities in those numbers — I think makes it difficult not to do something and not to do something big to fix this.”

  Business Insider May 7, 2021
• USTR begins hearings on digital services taxes today

  The U.S. and other market economies should create a “reciprocal” trade remedy program to combat unfair foreign trade practices, Casey said on Friday.

  “We should consider working with allies to create a common defense against illegal subsidies from nonmarket economies like China,” the Senate Finance Committee member said at a virtual event hosted by the Economic Policy Institute. “This could mean establishing reciprocal remedies against trade distortions, such as illegal subsidies. Measures could be limited scope, such as anti-dumping or countervailing duties on goods from these nonmarket economies.”

  Politico Morning Trade May 7, 2021