Media clips
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“When you don’t see wages growing … you can be fairly certain that labor shortages, though possibly happening in some places, are not a driving feature of the labor market. And right now, wages are not growing at a rapid pace,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Shierholz said on Twitter that there are 80 percent more unemployed workers than job openings in the leisure and hospitality sector.
Washington Post May 7, 2021 -
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, doesn’t believe there is a widespread labor shortage. For one, wages aren’t rising rapidly, which indicates a tight labor market and job growth is booming, she said in a recent op-ed in the Initiative for Policy Dialogue.
As for the $300 unemployment benefits keeping low-wage workers away from jobs, she points to research papers that found an extremely limited effect the weekly $600 benefit had last year in discouraging workers.
Instead, the lack of workers may have to do with the fact that employers aren’t raising wages, she argued.
“Employers post their too-low wages, can’t find workers to fill jobs at that pay level, and claim they’re facing a labor shortage,” she wrote.” Given the ubiquity of this dynamic, 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.’”
CNBC May 7, 2021 -
For years, the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank close to organized labor (and where Bernstein, Boushey, and Jones each worked for a time) functioned as the locus of Democratic opposition to Clinton’s and Obama’s approach. The skills explanation offered both administrations “an excuse for what was a systematic deploying of policy to disempower workers,” argues Larry Mishel, a senior fellow at EPI who previously served as its president.
To Mishel and like-minded critics, the skills-gap theory couldn’t account for two key trends: the rising share of income and wealth concentrating in the top 1 percent, and the slowdown in wage growth even among college graduates, who were supposed to benefit from the digital revolution. And for many progressive skeptics, the skills gap also carried an unpleasant whiff of blaming workers for their stagnating wages, with the implication that they could solve their problems if they just devoted themselves to obtaining more education. “The center-left has totally abandoned, and appropriately so, that framework for understanding wage suppression and inequality,” Mishel told me. “What’s replaced it is a greater attention to the increases in employer power.”
The Atlantic May 7, 2021 -
Many labor and retirement analysts say that raising the minimum wage would be a vital step for advancing the economic security of lower-wage workers in the second half of life.
It would allow some to retire later, which could then boost their Social Security benefits when they finally claim them, said Ben Zipperer, economist at the progressive nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Next Avenue May 7, 2021 -
It’s difficult to square the notion of a shortage of food service workers with the strong job growth in that industry, said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department now with the Economic Policy Institute. Dining and drinking establishments added 176,000 jobs in March, the biggest gain in any sector.
“I’m sure that labor supply is lower than it would be if we didn’t have COVID, but that doesn’t mean there’s a labor shortage,” Shierholz said.
Huffpost May 7, 2021 -
Despite anecdotal evidence from businesses, liberal economists said it’s unlikely the United States is facing a labor shortage. Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, noted that there are still far more unemployed workers than job openings, according to federal government surveys. She said there haven’t been meaningful wage increases, either, which are a hallmark of labor shortages.
“It’s certainly happening in places,” Shierholz said of businesses having a hard time finding workers. “The real question is not whether it’s happening here or there, but is it a driving force in the labor market? And when you look at the data, it just doesn’t come up.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer May 7, 2021 -
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 -
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 -
“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 -
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