“March was definitely a bright spot. The increase of more than 900,000 jobs is definitely a promising start to the recovery,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told Insider. “It’s good, but let’s make sure we can hold onto it.”
Business Insider
April 9, 2021
Liberal groups say those steps represent a big change from prior Democratic administrations. Under Obama, for instance, two of the most prominent think-tanks on the left — the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Economic Policy Institute — felt almost entirely shut out of policymaking.
Now, by contrast, CEPR and EPI have former employees — Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey — occupying two of the three positions on the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Janelle Jones, a former EPI economic analyst, is now chief economist at the Labor Department.
Washington Post
April 9, 2021
That’s no surprise to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. When the economy tumbles, the job market tends to be worse for young people, she says.
The reality is that there may be plenty of cheaper-to-hire college graduates, but in an economy still recovering from major layoffs, there are also plenty more experienced workers desperate for jobs.
“They’ll choose, all else equal, people with more experience,” Gould says about employers. “So young workers are left out in the cold and many are going to have a hard time starting their career.”
NPR
April 9, 2021
Features Q&A with Lynn Rhinehart.
Law360
April 2, 2021
But while some sectors are back to their
pre-pandemic employment levels, the overall US economy still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it did before Covid-19 related
job losses started a year ago.
“Even at this pace, it could take more than a year to dig out of the total jobs shortfall,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “However, today’s number is certainly a promising sign for the recovery.
CNN Business
April 2, 2021
Outsourcing firms dominated the list of the top companies receiving new H-1B visas last year, according to a new report.
“Instead of being used to fill genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting U.S. labor standards, the latest data show that the H-1B’s biggest users are companies that have an outsourcing business model,” said the report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
…
According to the institute’s report, more than half the top 30 companies receiving new H-1B visas in 2020 were outsourcers. “Those 17 outsourcing firms alone were issued 20,000 H-1B visas, nearly one-quarter of the total 85,000 annual limit,” said the report by the institute’s director of immigration law and policy research Daniel Costa and Howard University professor Ron Hira, who studies the H-1B.
The Mercury News
April 2, 2021
By early 2020, women were a majority of the workforce. But a year into the pandemic, much of those gains have been erased. Almost a million mothers left the workforce last year, and economists are sounding the alarm.
“What we have seen in this downturn has been unprecedented,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
Newsy
April 2, 2021
The U.S. added 916,000 jobs in March, surpassing most economists’ forecast and signaling a strengthening economy, as businesses eased restrictions helped by the vaccine rollout, warmer weather and a decline in coronavirus infections. President Joe Biden’s $1.9-trillion American Rescue Package, which allocated $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of households, also helped to inject more life into the economy.
It’s the strongest job growth the country has seen since the initial recovery faded last summer, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. “Even with these gains, the labor market is still down 8.4 million jobs from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. In addition, thousands of jobs would have been added each month over the last year without the pandemic recession.”
…
“However, today’s number is certainly a promising sign for the recovery, especially as vaccinations increase and vital provisions in the American Rescue Plan have continued to ramp up since the March reference period to today’s data,” Gould added. “The benefits of the ARP will continue to be captured in coming months.”
MarketWatch
April 2, 2021