Media clips
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Business owners across the U.S. say they can’t find enough workers. Right now, the U.S. unemployment rate stands at about 6 percent and millions of people are actively looking for a job. But some have suggested $300 per week in supplemental unemployment benefits is keeping low-income workers from returning to work. For many people, that’s more than they made while on the clock and it has become a lifeline. To help frame the debate, we ask labor economist Valerie Wilson to unpack what the numbers really tell us, and provide context for what the future of work looks like in high contact industries.
Matter of Fact May 21, 2021 -
Elise Gould with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said most people aren’t working from home and can’t take kids to the office with them.
“Many women who have a hard time are the ones who have to physically go into work—and that’s the vast majority to this economy,” Gould said. “Even today, 80% of workers are actually going physically to work. So they have no ability to take care of young kids. They can’t go to those jobs.”
Gould said women have borne the brunt of unemployment during the pandemic. That’s largely because they take on disproportionate caregiving responsibility. But she said this was a problem before COVID, too.
Gould said mothers’ labor force participation has been softening for decades. She said the cost-benefit analysis is hard to weigh.
“It’s a false choice that people are making,” Gould said. “They don’t really have a choice between being able to work in the labor market reliably, and get the early care and education that they want for their kids because it is simply out of reach.”
That’s not just the case for low-income families, Gould said. Many moderate income families also struggle. She said the burden is worse for Black and Latina women.
Still, Gould said she’s hopeful those displaced from work due the pandemic can rejoin the workforce soon.
“I’m optimistic. I think that there will be many opportunities as it becomes safe to completely reopen and schools are open and child care centers are reliably open,” Gould said. “I think there will be opportunities that will return to many people who have been sidelined in this economy.”
Gould said without policy change to better support families and child care providers, a “return to normal” will remain out of reach for many.
WGLT May 21, 2021 -
A paper from the Economic Policy Institute finds that the widening gap between what an average worker earns each hour and what they produce has been one of the main drivers of inequality in the U.S. in recent decades.
And that’s no accident. The paper’s authors, Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens, argue that’s “been generated primarily through intentional policy decisions designed to suppress typical workers’ wage growth, the failure to improve and update existing policies, and the failure to thwart new corporate practices and structures aimed at wage suppression.”
Overly austere economic policies, globalization and less unionization haven’t helped either. The solution is more political than economic.
Bloomberg May 21, 2021 -
Still, the possibility that enhanced unemployment benefits could be a disincentive highlights one of the flaws in the pre-pandemic labor market and the need for changes, said Wilson, who heads the think tank’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.
“The fact that someone may make more though unemployment insurance than working would strongly suggest there was a problem there to begin with, that wages are so low in some occupations that it would be more worthwhile not to work than to go to work,” she said.
Boston Globe May 21, 2021 -
“We will have a weird six months ahead,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It will be a real challenge for the administration and the Fed to stay firm on their stance.”
Bloomberg May 21, 2021 -
More and more COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted and consumers are returning to businesses. But many of the unemployed aren’t heading back to work. Some are blaming supplemental unemployment benefits for the worker shortage, but experts say that’s not the only reason. Heidi Shierholz, Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute, gives her perspective on the future of our economy.
Matter of Fact May 21, 2021 -
That’s because while the new CDC guidance is likely to boost demand for labor, it could also have the countervailing effect of expanding supply, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
It is important to remember that there are between 9 million and 11 million fewer jobs in the United States now than there would have been if the economy had not been sidelined by the pandemic last year. The workers who held those jobs may have disappeared from the workforce, but they haven’t disappeared.
Essentially, as the danger of being infected by the coronavirus declines, multiple factors contribute to a more willing labor force.
“What is also happening is that schools are opening up — that makes more people able to enter the workforce,” she said. “And more people are getting vaccinated. That means that more people feel safe reentering the workforce.”
Voice of America May 21, 2021 -
Hospitality is the only sector in the U.S. showing some signs of a labor shortage, said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute who specializes in state labor markets.
The “clearest sign of a real labor shortage,” he said, is rapidly rising wages, and it looks like hospitality is actually upping pay to attract workers. That’s overdue, he said, and, even with improved wages, pay in the sector is comparatively low.
But the economy is still in the midst of recovery, Cooper said.
The U.S. is still down 8.2 million jobs. As of South Carolina’s last employment report, the state was down 66,600 jobs year-over-year. Two of ten sectors — construction and trade, transportation and utilities — had fully recovered their pre-pandemic jobs while the others posted deficits.
Cooper said he’s concerned the decision by some states to end benefits early could be “short-sighted.”
“The point of unemployment insurance is to keep people afloat, until they can find a decent job that’s appropriate for their skills,” he said.
Removing the safety net while the economy is still recovering, Cooper said, could lead workers into lower-wage jobs or jobs they’re overqualified for.
While that could fill openings in the short-term, he argued that doesn’t “promote economic well-being.”
The Charleston Post and Courier May 21, 2021 -
May 19, 2021
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To understand what’s actually going on in the economy and discuss why a restaurant labor shortage could be welcome news for workers, I spoke with Heidi Shierholz, the director of policy and a senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. Before rejoining EPI in 2017, Shierholz served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor.
Mother Jones May 19, 2021