“Absolutely, we’re still in a crisis,” Elise Gould said.
Elise Gould is a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan Think Tank in DC.
“9 to 11 million more people don’t have a job that would’ve had a job. We’re on a very different trajectory,” Gould said. “That means, they do not have wages to be paying their bill. They do not have income. Many people are struggling –it’s very difficult for many people out there today.”
WSMV News 4
May 27, 2021
Although the tariffs were a hallmark of Trump’s trade policy, Biden would have some political cover if he decides to leave them in place.
“Four years ago, the U.S. primary aluminum industry was hanging on by a thread,” a report Wednesday by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said, noting that aluminum production increased 37.6 percent after Trump’s tariffs went into effect.
The report argues that higher prices have had no meaningful effect on consumer prices or other industries.
The Hill
May 27, 2021
The reason why this is not worrisome is that prices are basically rebounding from a deeply depressed base in the pit of the COVID recession a year ago. In March 2020, before the recession hit, core inflation was running at an annual rate of just 1.5 percent, or well below the Fed’s target rate.
As EPI’s Josh Bivens puts it:
Even several years of inflation above 2% would still not make up for years of too-slow price growth over the past 12 years, and making up for these years of too-slow price growth would go a long way toward reestablishing the credibility of the Federal Reserve inflation target. This is an opportunity, not a threat.
The American Prospect
May 25, 2021
A 2019 Brookings study calculated that median earnings in metro Atlanta were $18.12 an hour. But about one-fifth of workers made $10.09 an hour or less, below the roughly $12.74-an-hour wage that sets the poverty line for a family of four.
“It does give people a little wiggle room not to take a job that has really low wages and is not safe,” said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, and now senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 24, 2021
The inquiry comes at a time when there’s been growing scrutiny by local labor enforcers over how workers are being treated by companies. A report this week from the Economic Policy Institute’s Terri Gerstein found a growing number of district attorneys and attorneys general are taking on employers over issues ranging from worker misclassification to wage theft. Meanwhile, gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft are fighting harder than ever to solidify a business model that does not require them to classify certain workers as employees.
CNN Business
May 24, 2021
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute found that “somewhere between 27.8% and 46.5% of private-sector workers are subject to noncompetes,” which means anywhere from 36 million to 60 million American workers have signed a noncompete agreement in their current job.
Business Insider
May 24, 2021
David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said the true indicator of a labor shortage is rising wages, but there’s not accelerating wage growth across the board.
There is evidence, however, of a shortage in leisure and hospitality fields, he added.
“Wages in leisure and hospitality employment make up just 4% of all wages in the U.S. economy, so this is a very small portion of the economy where employers may be struggling to find folks,” Cooper said. “There’s no reason why difficulty for those employers should mean that we should turn off unemployment benefits for everyone.”
Stateline
May 24, 2021
In April, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home, said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings.
Shierholz added that unemployment benefits are designed to give workers the time to find jobs that are better suited to their abilities.
“We want people well-matched to their skills and experience,” she said. “That’s what helps the economy run better.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 21, 2021
Republicans have blamed the perceived labor shortages on unemployment benefits, despite economists dismissing the benefits as a driving factor, with data showing labor shortages are confined to the leisure and hospitality sector and show no signs of spilling over to other industries or reducing growth within the leisure and hospitality sector, according to a recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
May 21, 2021