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 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
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
In a virtual talk hosted by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, Mr. Casey reiterated many of his long-standing policy issues — from addressing age discrimination to expanding Medicaid to blocking cheap Chinese imports — framed in the context of legislative action this spring.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
May 7, 2021
According to EPI’s research, CEO compensation jumped 14 percent from 2018 to 2019. Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, said the increased CEO pay seen at various casino companies last year was largely due to the stock market’s rapid recovery over the course of the pandemic, since a majority of executive compensation comes from cashing out stock options or stock grants.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
May 7, 2021
Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said he’s encouraged by the Fed’s increased focus on unemployment and higher tolerance for inflation. “In the past there have been Fed chairs who have been overly wary of inflation and they’ve often tried to fight it at the expense of employment,” he says. “That has disproportionately fallen on Black workers.”
Quartz
May 7, 2021
- The unemployment rate is 10.3% among 20- to 24-year-olds, and 13.3% among 18- to 19-year-olds, compared with the 5.3% unemployment among those over 25.
“We’re still in a huge hole,” says Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. “We are far from being recovered now.”
Axios
May 7, 2021
“Employers have the ability to set the terms of the contract,” said Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
“They’re really holding all the cards. They have all the leverage,” Gould said.
Gould noted that the country was still down 8.4 million jobs in March from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. The economy had been steadily adding jobs before the virus left millions out of work, she said, so theoretically the jobs shortfall is even higher, perhaps as high as 11 million.
Detroit Free Press
May 7, 2021
“We are certainly not seeing rapid wage growth that would really be the red flag of ‘Wow, things are tight. Employers truly on a really widespread basis can’t find the workers that they need,’” Shierholz said.
NPR
May 7, 2021