The new child tax credit works differently: starting in July, the federal government will send cash each month, until December, to parents for every child that they have regardless of the family’s employment status, and the remaining balance will be disbursed once families file their taxes next year. “It will actually maintain and lift living standards for millions of women and their children,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, told me, adding that she hopes the credit will eventually become a permanent benefit. “There’s also a massive racial-justice angle here, too. This will disproportionately help families of color, and it will disproportionately bring Black kids and Hispanic kids out of poverty. This is groundbreaking.”
The New Yorker
March 16, 2021
The problem is much bigger than a single woman or a single job. An Economic Policy Institute study from 2016 estimated that women are paid 83 cents for every dollar men make, comparing over hours worked. For Black women, the number falls to 63 cents on the dollar. The disparity gets worse for older workers and more skilled jobs, deepening over time. As pay equity activists see it, the change is gradual, beginning with a slightly lower salary on hiring, a slightly tougher path to promotion, until it’s broad enough to make a visible dent in the way a society’s wealth is distributed.
The Verge
March 16, 2021
Fifty-seven percent of Black adults were denied or approved for less than requested when it comes to credit, as compared with 24% of white adults.
That’s according to a new analysis by LendingTree of federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the 2020 Economic Policy Institute report. LendingTree brings to light a snapshot of the disparities between Black and white Americans when it comes to finances.
WWBT
March 16, 2021
“We are in a jobs hole that’s on the order of 12 million jobs,” said Heidi Sheirholz, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s just enormous.”
Scripps National News
March 16, 2021
State attorneys general across the U.S., according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, have stepped in to protect worker rights using their relatively wide range of powers, enforcement and otherwise. Between mid-2015 and the summer of 2020, the EPI said, AG offices in five states — Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — and the District of Columbia have created worker protection units. California, Massachusetts and New York also have similar enforcement arms.
Even without special teams, AGs have the power to investigate and prosecute crimes against workers, but creation of these focused units, the EPI said, work as a deterrent to those considering engaging in wage fraud and institutionalizes the work, helping to ensure that the mission of protecting workers survives from administration to administration.
Construction Dive
March 16, 2021
Stephanie Kelton, economist and professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University American, retweeted an article by the Economic Policy Institute on the recently passed Covid-19 stimulus bill paving the way to recovery for the US. About $350bn of the stimulus bill will support the state and local governments to compensate their revenue losses, restore budget cuts and adjust better to the escalated fiscal demands due to the pandemic.
The loss of jobs in the state and local public-sector during the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented. More than 1.5 million people lost their jobs to the pandemic within the first four months, especially in the education sector, which is still approximately 7% lower than that was in February 2020.
Pharmaceutical Technology
March 16, 2021
In 2014, the Economic Policy Institute reported that nearly half of tipped workers in the country — 46% — rely on some form of public benefits, such as SNAP (known as Food Stamps) or Medicaid. More than 12% of tipped workers have incomes below the federal poverty line, according to the EPI.
Wisconsin Examiner
March 16, 2021
However, an analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that in “one-fair-wage” states, where tipped workers are paid the same as the state’s minimum wage, there was actually more restaurant growth than other states. Both the number of full-service restaurants and people employed in them grew.
Business Insider
March 15, 2021
In its conclusion that a $15 federal minimum wage would provide a major boost to workers currently struggling to survive on starvation-level wages, Morgan Stanley’s report was in line with an analysis released earlier this week by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which found that the pay hike would “raise the pay of essential and frontline workers” and “reduce the number of people living in poverty.”
Implementing a $15 minimum wage by 2025 as proposed by the Raise the Wage Act would lift 3.7 million people in the U.S. out of poverty, according to EPI.
“Raising the minimum wage is a no-brainer,” said David Cooper, a senior economic analyst at EPI.
Common Dreams
March 15, 2021