Media clips

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• Obama staffers amazed at how ‘different’ Biden’s approach to stimulus is

  One is Heidi Shierholz, who served as chief economist to Obama’s secretary of Labor. “If my 2010 self could see just how different we’re handling this recovery than we handled that one — when we were just pulling our hair out, because Congress was turning towards austerity when the unemployment rate was literally over 9% — it was just an outrageous approach to the recovery at that time.”

  Shierholz, who is now director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, noted that decade saw an “incredibly weak and slow” economic recovery, which she attributed to Congress not providing the kind of fiscal relief that would have boosted aggregate demand to get the economy going, “and we are not making that mistake this time.”

  Business Insider April 1, 2021
• Biden seeks to reverse decades of disparity in next economic move

  Spending on investment outside of housing rose an average of 3.4% a year from 2000 through 2019, down from 5.2% the prior two decades and a heady 7.2% in the 1960s — when tax rates were substantially higher.

  Companies have the cash to grow, but with wealth and income skewed to the top, “there’s not enough customers to buy the new output,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  Bloomberg March 30, 2021
• For union battling Amazon, victory could bring a stalemate

  But initial collective bargaining agreements usually take years to hammer out at the negotiating table. More than half of workplaces that form unions are unable to reach an initial contract within a year, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and 37 percent of newly formed private-sector unions still have no contract after two years.

  “It’s so difficult to hold an employer accountable,” said Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs and labor counsel at EPI. And even if the union engages in “this protracted legal battle, you know the penalty that the employer is facing is quite frankly minimal.”

  Politico March 30, 2021
• A pandemic mystery: the rise in Asian American unemployment

  A recent report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute found Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders saw the biggest increase of any group in state unemployment rates compared to white, Black and Hispanic workers from the first quarter of 2020 through the fourth quarter.

  Asian American unemployment rose by 4.6 percentage points in the states where EPI was able to estimate it, compared with 3.9 percentage points for Hispanic and Black workers and 2.3 percentage points for white workers.

  The EPI estimates are based on a survey conducted monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but use numbers modeled at the state level by state labor departments.

  New York, Virginia, and Hawaii — which saw its crucial tourism industry hit hard by the pandemic — all saw Asian American joblessness jump the most in the EPI report. In California, the jump was the second largest of any group.

  MarketWatch March 30, 2021
• Across America: When the economy ‘bounces back,’ who actually recovers?

  Features interview with Elise Gould.

  In November 2020, the Economic Policy Institute estimated 25 million American workers are either unemployed, underemployed or have pulled out of the workforce entirely, many of whom are low-wage earners.

  Could a heated economic recovery pull these workers back into the labor force? Or will America’s most vulnerable workers be left behind?

  1A March 30, 2021
• Biden is splitting with Obama on the economy and the proof is in their stimulus plans

  “If my 2010 self could see just how different we’re handling this recovery than we handled that one — when we were just pulling our hair out, because Congress was turning towards austerity when the unemployment rate was literally over 9% — it was just an outrageous approach to the recovery at that time,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to Obama’s secretary of Labor, told Insider. “And so this is just incredibly different.”

  Business Insider March 29, 2021
• Union cites outsourcing work to China as one reason Lehigh Valley Dixie cup plant will close, putting 190 out of work

  “It is a bipartisan failure of public policy dating back at least two or three decades,” said Robert E. Scott, a senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., a think tank that seeks to include the needs of low- and middle-income workers in economic policy discussions.

  Amid the various policies, the United States has seen a net loss of manufacturing plants every year from 1998 through 2018, according to U.S. Census Bureau data included in an August report that Scott authored. Overall, the report notes, the United States has had a net loss of more than 91,000 manufacturing plants and nearly 5 million manufacturing jobs since 1997.

  Manufacturing is still a major U.S. sector, employing 12 million people, but Scott argues it could be stronger and add a significant number of jobs if the country reforms its trade policy, curbs dollar overvaluation and invests in infrastructure and clean energy.

  Allentown Morning Call March 29, 2021
• ‘A huge, huge toll’: For households reliant on two incomes, Covid job loss changed everything

  Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization, said lower- and middle-income families alike were vulnerable to major economic instability after losses of income.

  “It’s incredibly destabilizing in the short run,” she said. “People just simply don’t have the savings to be able to weather job losses or to cut back on hours or furloughs to be able to continue paying their bills,” she said.

  Losing a home, facing declines in its credit score or the continued inability to get a job could also affect a family long after the pandemic is over, she said.

  NBC News March 29, 2021
• COVID pushed Black unemployment higher in Pa. than anywhere in the nation, report says

  Nearly one in five Black Pennsylvanians was unemployed as 2020 ended, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning D.C. think tank. That was the highest rate of unemployment for Black people in any U.S. state at the time.

  …

  Initially, the pandemic actually leveled the playing field, according to Kyle Moore, the economist focusing on race and inequality for EPI who crunched the data. Pre-pandemic unemployment was low on average, but Black workers were still about twice as likely to be unemployed as white workers.

  But as jobs plummeted in March and April 2020, that reduced inequality,

  “That ratio actually fell to an extent that Black workers were only about 20% more likely to be unemployed than white workers, at least at the beginning,” Moore said.

  In other words, when everyone was laid low, things were fairer. Once the slow economic recovery began last year, pre-existing gaps reappeared and began widening.

  Now, “unemployment rates for Black workers are falling a lot slower, similar to previous recessions,” Moore said. “That points towards more structural issues with the economy.”

  WHYY March 29, 2021
• Amazon drivers say peeing in bottles is an ‘inhumane’ yet common part of the job, despite the company denying it happens

  Celine McNicholas, the director of government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute, said Amazon was denying the “pee bottle thing” as part of a public-relations push to be seen as a progressive employer, while it attempts to shut down a union drive in Alabama.

  “I think it is probably the only play that they have — to say this is not the reality,” McNicholas said. “Because the reality is shameful and disgusting.”

  Business Insider March 26, 2021