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The bill will also have other, far-reaching ramifications. Unions, after all, are simply made up of workers; bills that are good for the former tend to be good for the latter. Workers who face racial and gender discrimination on the job could benefit the most from the PRO Act’s provisions. In unions, said Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute, “workers of color are not experiencing the same sort of wage suppression that they are in other, non-unionized settings.” Union membership thus correlates to lower racial wealth gaps. “The PRO Act promotes greater racial economic justice because unions allow for collective bargaining, essentially shrinks Black-white wage gaps, and brings greater fairness in terms of hiring opportunities,” she added.
New York Magazine March 15, 2021 -
A 2018 study by economists Jessica Schieder of the Economic Policy Institute and Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calculated that the new tax increased by more than 50 percent the cost of paying these health insurance executives in excess of $500,000.
The New Republic March 15, 2021 -
In Michigan, 1.2 million workers — about 25% of the workforce — would see a pay bump with a $15 minimum wage, per the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank. U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) said she was “disappointed” the Senate axed the measure.
Michigan Advance March 15, 2021 -
The stock market’s rebound over the past year has likely had little effect on building wealth for millions of American households, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-learning think tank.
That’s because when the market is booming, the majority of the gains go to the wealthiest households, she says.
“For the vast majority of people, fluctuations in the stock market have very little effect on their wealth,” says Shierholz. “Most people don’t have sizable, if any, amount of money in the stock market, even including stocks held indirectly through retirement accounts.”
Another issue is that the people with the least wealth have endured the most job losses in the pandemic, Shierholz says. The lowest-paid quarter of workers lost 8 million jobs in 2020 while the highest-paid quarter of workers gained 1 million jobs, according to Shierholz.
“It’s always the case that low and middle-income workers get hit harder by recessions, but I’ve never seen something this stark,” Shierholz says.
“It really compounds the suffering because it’s the people who don’t have savings or wealthier families to fall back on in hard times,” she adds.
USA Today March 15, 2021 -
The package won’t eliminate economic scarring. Many jobs in the hospitality, entertainment and retail sectors won’t ever return. Researchers at Harvard University have found that the number of small businesses open is still down 32% compared to January 2020. The Economic Policy Institute, looking at the latest report on job openings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, notes that for every 15 unemployed workers, there were only available jobs for 10 of them.
CNN Business March 15, 2021 -
Yet supporters, like Thea Lee, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, say they believe the rescue package will make a meaningful difference in lifting up the most vulnerable families, even though many of its major provisions come with an expiration date.
“I would give it high marks for reducing income inequality, recognizing that it’s not meant to be a long-term structural change,” she said. “It’s a one-time relief package.”
Lee said she predicts that the expanded child credits will prove “so popular that they will get extended” and that policymakers will consider raising taxes on the richest once they need to find money to pay for Biden’s other plans, especially a big public works program. They could get a start, she said, by providing more money to an underfunded Internal Revenue Service to conduct more audits, raising revenue by targeting tax cheats at the top of the income scale.
Associated Press March 15, 2021 -
These workers were twice as likely to contract COVID-19 than their white-collar counterparts, according to Joblist, a job searching website, and only 16% are still working remotely compared to 49% of white-collar workers.
“It makes sense,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), told Yahoo Money. “When you think about who is being made to go to work, those people oftentimes have less power in the workplace.”
“A lot of it has to do with power,” Gould said. “People who have been able to negotiate for themselves, higher wages and better benefits, are also the ones who are able to work from the safety of their own home.”
Gould noted that some front-line essential workers have received improved safety and health standards in the workplace, especially those with unions that have more leverage in workplace negotiations.
“But for many people, they haven’t been able to enjoy the privileges that many white-collar workers have enjoyed over the last year,” she said. “It’s just another sign of what the disparities in the workplace mean for people who are able to continue getting their paycheck and not risk their health.”
Many blue-collar jobs have been considered “essential” during the pandemic. Data from EPI shows that people of color make up the majority of essential workers in food and agriculture and in industrial, commercial, residential facilities, and services.
“When you think about lower-paid workers, we’re not just talking about income disparities and power,” Gould said. “You’re also talking about race.”
The erosion of labor standards, such as not raising the minimum wage or making it harder for workers to unionize for better benefits, hurt Black and Hispanic workers, Gould pointed out.
“It’s important to keep that in the conversation as well,” she said.
Yahoo Finance March 15, 2021 -
Nationwide, foreign-born workers make up 75 percent of the agricultural workforce, and about half of all farmworkers are undocumented immigrants. In Florida, the majority of farmworkers are immigrants who hail from South and Central America, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Over 70 percent of U.S. Department of Labor investigations of farms found labor violations, including wage theft and inadequate housing and transportation, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Tampa Bay Times March 15, 2021 -
A former economist at the Economic Policy Institute and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Jones last year coined what she called a new ideology “Black Women Best.” She called for reorienting thinking by putting Black women first in pulling them out of the recession as a powerful tool to help the economy truly recover.
NPR March 15, 2021 -
This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, as of the middle of February, the economy was still 9.5 million jobs below where it was in February 2020. Elise Gould, economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said this translated into a 11.9 million job shortfall “when using a reasonable counterfactual of job growth if the recession hadn’t occurred”.
The Guardian March 15, 2021