Media clips

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• Unemployment rate falls for every group but is higher for Black and Hispanic workers

  The overall employment trend is moving in the right direction as the economy recovers from the pandemic, according to Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist with the Labor Department under the Obama administration.

  “Because people of color were disproportionately hit by this downturn, as we’re recovering from this, workers of color see disproportionate gains,” said Shierholz, senior economist and policy director at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  CNBC August 6, 2021
• 10 Ways Inequity Still Very Much Exists in the Workplace

  The differential between pay awarded to white males versus other workers is getting smaller in some instances, but the gap between wages paid to Caucasian men and both Black men and women has actually worsened in the past two decades, according to one report from the Economic Policy Institute.

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  Though some claim we’re in a “post-racial” society, the Economic Policy Institute reports Black workers still earn less than three-quarters of the pay awarded to their white colleagues—71 cents on the dollar for Black males, and 64 cents on the dollar for Black females.

  Newsweek August 6, 2021
• Map Shows Every State You Can’t Afford If You Earn Minimum Wage

  The user compared the state’s wages verse the cost of living, data compiled from MIT’s living wage calculator and the Economic Policy Institute.

  Fatherly August 6, 2021
• Is the middle class okay? Half of Americans don’t think so

  Between 1979-2019, the Economic Policy Institute found, employees have increased productivity by 72%, but their wages have only increased 17% in the last forty years.

  Fast Company August 6, 2021
• People in half the country got unemployment checks ‘unacceptably’ slowly last summer, Fed report finds

  And the Fed report says that the creation of PUA “represents another substantial achievement.” That program made up the greatest share of federal UI distributed by the end of 2020, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  Business Insider August 6, 2021
• It’s August 3, and we’re just now reaching Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

  “The fact that we are talking about this every year reflects the stubborn, structural nature of pay inequities, which is manifold,” says Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute. “Occupational segregation limits Black women’s access to higher paying occupations. But even when employed in the same occupation, pay discrimination results in lower earnings for women relative to men.”

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  “The lack of a national policy of paid leave means that women are more likely to take unpaid time out,” says Wilson. “The combination of factors means, on average, women start their careers with a pay gap that they are never able to close.”

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  Despite the fact that so many women have dropped out of the workforce (or scaled back their hours) during the pandemic, the date of Black Women’s Equal Pay Day has not been pushed back—at least not yet. Next year’s Black Women’s Equal Pay Day will reflect more up-to-date annual earnings data from the U.S. Census population survey, says Wilson.

  Fast Company August 6, 2021
• This Is Your Yearly Reminder That Black Women Are Still Paid 37 Percent Less Than Their White Male Counterparts

  Currently, it takes 19 months for a Black woman to earn what a white man in a comparable role made in a year—despite Black women having “the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home,” according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  The Root August 6, 2021
• Wage Gap Stats You Need To Know On Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

  August 3, 2021, marks Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, and there are a lot of wage-gap statistics you need to know on this day — which highlights the amount of time Black women need to work to earn the same wages as their white male counterparts — include the troubling fact that Black women workers are paid only 68 cents on the dollar relative to white non-Hispanic men, even after controlling for education, years of experience, and location, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And, Black women must work four months longer than white women to earn the same wage. This is not equality.

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  “Pay inequity directly touches the lives of Black women in at least three distinct ways,” Valerie Wilson, Janelle Jones, Kayla Blado, and Elise Gould reported on the EPI blog. “Since few Black women are among the top five percent of earners in this country, they have experienced the relatively slow wage growth that characterizes growing class inequality along with the vast majority of other Americans. But in addition to this class inequality, they also experience lower pay due to gender and race bias.”

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  Additionally, the EPI reported that “regardless of their connection to the labor market, their level of educational attainment, or their occupation, they are paid less than their white male counterparts. The ongoing gender and racial discrimination faced by Black women means that seven months into 2017, Black women finally have equal pay with what white men earned last year.” The wage gap is not an alternative fact.

  Bustle August 6, 2021
• What Women Owe One Another on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day

  To understand the origins of the gap between Black and white women, one need only look back as far as the 1970s, the decade that saw the first series of victories in pay and other gender-discrimination cases, says Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy. That decade also saw major increases in the number of women, particularly white women, in the full-time workforce. In fact, the growth rate for women in the workforce was twice that of men.

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  But in the 1990s, a second pay gap, one between white women and other groups of women, emerged, Wilson, an economist, says, as white women experienced a faster rate of wage growth than Black women and other groups of women. That means that the pay gap is the handiwork of people who are, in many cases, still hiring and firing, promoting and making pay decisions today. Some of the deciders are themselves women.

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  But the racial wage gap among women isn’t just about which industries which women enter. To be clear, Valerie Wilson says, it is also about bias, about stereotypes and notions of who deserves to earn what. The individual can try, and may sometimes succeed, in asking for fair pay. But there’s almost no way to negotiate past bias to eliminate all wage gaps. Pay disparities exist between white women and other groups of women at every rung of the income, experience and education ladder.

  Time August 6, 2021
• Black Women’s Equal Pay Day: 214 days into 2021, Black women have finally earned what white men did last year

  The pandemic compounded the calculations because Black and women of color were harder hit by unemployment, with 18.3% of Black women losing their jobs between February 2020 and April 2020, compared with 13.2% of white men, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  New York Daily News August 6, 2021