A report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that “nearly all the states cutting UI still have significantly fewer jobs than before the pandemic.” In Texas, for instance, nearly one million workers are “officially unemployed,” meaning that they’re actively looking for work but haven’t had luck yet.
Business Insider
June 11, 2021
Broadly, 7.9 million workers said that they were not able to work because their work closed or lost business due to the pandemic. A recent report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that Black and Hispanic workers were less likely to be able to telework compared to white peers.
Business Insider
June 11, 2021
The lower teen unemployment rate is “not unequivocally great news,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
For one thing, the amount of people in this group seeking work actually slipped slightly from April to May. Some job seekers might not be seeing opportunities and leaving the workforce altogether, she said.
MarketWatch
June 11, 2021
U.S. job growth picked up in May — along with worker pay — and the unemployment rate fell, signaling firms are making some progress filling a record number of openings as the economy powers up. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, talks with Bloomberg’s Romaine Bostick, Alix Steel and Joe Weisenthal on “What’d You Miss?” about the U.S. jobs report.
Bloomberg TV
June 11, 2021
Low-wage, low-hour workers were among the hardest hit during the pandemic, as 80% of job losses were among the lowest quarter of wage earners in the US, with leisure and hospitality sector the hardest hit and currently the industry facing the largest job shortfall, with 3.5m fewer jobs in February compared with the same month last year, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Guardian
June 11, 2021
Although the job gains are welcome news for working people, analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows that even if current monthly employment gains continue, the country won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until well into 2022.
Analyzing the latest numbers, EPI senior economist Elise Gould said that officially the labor market is still down 7.6 million jobs since February 2020 when the coronavirus crisis started. But taking into account the growth in the working-age population since then, the real jobs shortfall is still between 8.6 and 10.7 million.
The jobs recovery remains very uneven by race. For white workers, the official rate is 5.1%, close to the national average. For workers of color, the number of people still out of work is considerably higher: 7.3% for Latinx, 5.5% for Asian Americans, and 9.1% for Black workers. EPI economist Heidi Shierholz said Friday that the numbers show how “our history of and present systemic racism hugely affect the labor market.”
People’s World
June 11, 2021
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the data in conjunction with jobs numbers that have already been released for May “are telling a pretty similar story that there’s pick-up in demand and the supply of workers are increasing to meet that demand.
“It’s going to take a little while, but things are moving in the right direction.”
Financial Times
June 11, 2021
Average hourly wages across all industries last month increased by 2 percent, and leisure and hospitality was a leader for wage growth last month. But even the wage increases merely put the sector back to its pre-pandemic trend line rather than in inflation territory suggesting some massive labor shortage crisis, Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, noted on Twitter.
“In leisure and hospitality, earnings have grown enough to suggest a sector-specific shortage, but that may be largely the result of customers — and their tips — returning,” Shierholz tweeted.
Skift
June 11, 2021
“Postal workers look like America, but with a higher proportion of Black workers and veterans,” writes Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, in an enlightening report titled “The War Against the Postal Service” released this past December. It notes that postal work pays better than private sector jobs that do not require a college degree. Only 9 percent of postal workers make less than $15 an hour, compared to more than 28 percent in the private sector overall.
The Progressive
June 11, 2021
Instead, tips likely account for the pay increase as restaurants and bars return to pre-Covid customer capacity, according to Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“Since December 2020, the rise in tip income, not an increase in base wages, can likely entirely explain the acceleration of wages for production and nonsupervisory workers in restaurants and bars,” he wrote Friday.
CNBC
June 11, 2021