“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.
“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.
CNBC
April 9, 2021
The United States was suffering a serious teacher shortage before COVID-19 hit. The Economic Policy Institute quotes a study that states school districts “had serious difficulty finding qualified teachers for their positions” — in 2016. This would impact “students’ inability to learn,” and affect “student achievement.” It would also make teaching less attractive to graduates, perpetuating the cycle.
Yahoo Finance
April 9, 2021
A report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that Section 232 measures under Trump, which applied a 25% tariff on imported steel products and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum, protected the domestic steel industry from chronic global excess capacity in major exporting countries.
“These tariffs were directly and simply good for steel producers and their workers,” Robert Scott, a senior economist at EPI, told Yahoo Finance. “It generated more jobs and more investment and more output than the domestic steel industry. … The fact is there was no significant negative impact on the prices of downstream products like cars, one of the biggest users of domestic steel.”
Yahoo Finance
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.
“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
“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,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post Friday. “The benefits of the ARP will continue to be captured in coming months.”
Sinclair Broadcast Group
April 9, 2021
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden fired Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal labor law.
Robb’s supporters protested that Biden had unfairly and illegally thrown him out of office 10 months before the end of his four-year term. In reality, Biden had ample legal authority for removing Robb, much of which is set forth in a legal memo penned by none other than Chief Justice John Roberts when he worked in the Reagan administration.
A new report by the nonpartisan US Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows why Biden was right to fire Robb—and to do so quickly. The GAO found that Robb was dismantling the agency from the inside. He reduced staff size, destroyed employee morale, and failed to spend the money appropriated by Congress. This all occurred while Robb was pursuing an anti-worker, pro-corporate agenda.
The Nation
April 9, 2021
In all, those long-term unemployed represented 24% of the 9.9 million total jobless workers last month, according to the bureau. (The data are without seasonal adjustments.)
“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.
“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.
CNBC
April 9, 2021
Biden said he wants Congress to pass a federal minimum wage increase, but there’s no deal in sight. Experts say people such as Romero often must make difficult decisions to sustain themselves.
“It’s not a question of being smart or being thoughtful or planning for the future. You are forced to make a series of bad decisions when life doesn’t work, and it can’t work with wages that low,” says Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington that researches economic policies for working people.
USA Today
April 9, 2021