Media clips

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• A year into Covid-19, Labor Department issues stall Vermonters’ efforts to collect unemployment

  Vermont has plenty of company in facing calls for unemployment insurance reform. Nationally, experts say the crisis has exposed deep problems in states’ unemployment systems.

  The problem was especially pronounced last spring. For every 10 people across the country who succeeded in lining up unemployment benefits in the first month of the pandemic, five to six more either tried and were unable to file a claim, or did not try to apply because it seemed too difficult, according to a study by the Washington, D.C-based Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.

  …

  “This is another part of the infrastructure in our country that needs to be updated, and we need to put resources into our systems so this doesn’t happen again,” said Elise Gould, an expert on wages and poverty at the Economic Policy Institute. “This is the kind of trouble that many people were facing in the past. But it happened so quickly when millions were claiming that it became clear to more people how broken the system was.”

  VT Digger May 14, 2021
• Column: Employers, governors push myth that unemployment checks keep lazy workers home

  “Employers simply don’t want to raise wages high enough to attract workers,” observes Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist for the Department of Labor who is now policy director at the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute. “I often suggest that whenever anyone says, ‘I can’t find the workers I need,’ she should really add, ‘at the wages I want to pay.’”

  LA Times May 14, 2021
• Calls to end pandemic unemployment benefits gain steam after disappointing jobs report

  While there is no single measure for workforce shortage, increased work hours and wages are considered some of the signs that indicate employers are struggling to fill jobs and the labor market is tightening, according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. Both occurred in April.

  Average weekly hours for workers in leisure in hospitality significantly increased in April, reaching 26.7 hours, up from its pre-pandemic levels of 25.8 hours in February 2020, according to data from the Labor Department.

  “If employers really can’t find the workers that they need, they’ll respond by ramping up the hours of the workers,” Shierholz told Yahoo Money.

  Yahoo Finance May 14, 2021
• Job market for new grads: Much hiring but much competition

  Even so, college seniors will be competing against a larger-than-usual universe of job seekers when you include last year’s crop of graduates.

  “Because there is a large pool of unemployed workers, companies can pick exactly who they want and skip over people with less experience,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  Graduating into a recession has historically led to poor outcomes for many young people, with research showing that they sometimes bear long-running scars. Starting a career in a recession can lead to lower incomes for as long as a decade afterward for those graduates, compared with their peers who completed college just before or after a recession.

  Associated Press May 14, 2021
• At New England’s biggest companies, CEO paychecks surged in 2020 as revenues fell

  Perhaps it would be OK if the average American worker shared in the largesse, but they have been left behind. An analysis done by the Economic Policy Institute found the ratio of compensation between CEOs and their workers was 21-to-1 in 1965; by 2019, the ratio was 320 to 1.

  Boston Globe May 14, 2021
• Why Republicans are ready to kill the $300 pandemic unemployment boost

  “Hard to single out unemployment benefits as ‘dampening’ job growth in the lowest-wage industries when those same industries are the ones with the fastest job growth,” Ben Zipperer, economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, tweeted on Friday.

  CNN May 14, 2021
• 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.”

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  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 14, 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 14, 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 14, 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 14, 2021