Media clips

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• Unemployment Benefits Are Not Creating A Worker Shortage

  It’s difficult to square the notion of a shortage of food service workers with the strong job growth in that industry, said Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department now with the Economic Policy Institute. Dining and drinking establishments added 176,000 jobs in March, the biggest gain in any sector.

  “I’m sure that labor supply is lower than it would be if we didn’t have COVID, but that doesn’t mean there’s a labor shortage,” Shierholz said.

  Huffpost May 7, 2021
• Unemployment remains high, yet many businesses say they can’t find enough workers

  Despite anecdotal evidence from businesses, liberal economists said it’s unlikely the United States is facing a labor shortage. Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, noted that there are still far more unemployed workers than job openings, according to federal government surveys. She said there haven’t been meaningful wage increases, either, which are a hallmark of labor shortages.

  “It’s certainly happening in places,” Shierholz said of businesses having a hard time finding workers. “The real question is not whether it’s happening here or there, but is it a driving force in the labor market? And when you look at the data, it just doesn’t come up.”

  The Philadelphia Inquirer May 7, 2021
• Opinion: Biden isn’t pursuing socialism. He’s just trying to catch up with other wealthy democracies.

  The Economic Policy Institute notes that income inequality in the United States has been worsening for years: “From 1978 to 2018, CEO compensation grew by 1,007.5%. … In contrast, wages for the typical worker grew by just 11.9%.” Our level of income inequality is now closer to that of developing countries in Africa and Latin American than to our European allies.

  The Washington Post May 7, 2021
• Is Unemployment Insurance Behind the Fast-Food Labor Shortage?

  But are unemployment payments the culprit here? “It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as a real driving factor,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “There is basically a lever employers can pull if they truly are facing a labor shortage of some kind: They can pay more to either attract new workers into the labor force or poach workers who are already in the labor force.”

  Shierholz noted there have yet to be signs of significant wage growth in the industries where workers are purported to be in severe shortage, and that previous data during the pandemic and the 2008 economic recession demonstrated that expanded unemployment benefits had minimal to no impact on whether workers returned to work.

  The American Prospect May 7, 2021
• Montana to end expanded jobless benefits in June, offer return-to-work bonuses

  “There are lots of anecdotal reports swirling around about employers who can’t find workers,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a Tuesday op-ed. “But a closer look reveals there may be a lot less to this than meets the eye.”

  Shierholz said that while there may be bona fide labor shortages in some pockets of the country, there are still too few jobs for too many unemployed workers.

  “In the latest data on job openings, there were nearly 40 percent more unemployed workers than job openings overall, and more than 80 percent more unemployed workers than job openings in the leisure and hospitality sector,” she said.

  She added that those businesses should raise wages to attract more workers, particularly because service jobs “are inherently more stressful and potentially dangerous because workers now have to deal with anti-maskers and ongoing health concerns.”

  The Hill May 7, 2021
• CSPAN

  There is not a lot of young people looking to work in agriculture. it is very physically demanding. there is also a study that addresses the question–the cost of the food. The study found increasing wages to farmworkers by 40% would only cost consumers $25 the entire year. That study was done by an agricultural economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  C-SPAN May 7, 2021
• Biden’s great economic rebalancing

  In 1995, more than a quarter century ago, I published a piece in The New Yorker that ran under the headline “Who Killed the Middle Class?” It was hardly a pathbreaking question. Even then, wage stagnation, rising inequality, and a fixation on cutting taxes and balancing the budget deficit were well-established trends. Among the sources I relied on was “The State of Working America,” a data-rich annual report that was, and still is, published by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. The economist Jared Bernstein, one of the authors of the report, went on to work for Biden in the Obama Administration, and has now joined the Biden Administration, as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

  The New Yorker May 7, 2021
• Is it over yet? Still no recession end date as U.S. economy hums along

  “I definitely think it’s over,” said Josh Bivens, research director at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on labor issues. Even with the existing gap in employment of about 8.5 million jobs missing from before the pandemic, the committee “might even date its end in June or July of last year.”

  “The real open question is when we move from ‘recovery’ – getting back to pre-recession levels – and move into ‘expansion’.”

  Reuters May 7, 2021
• Washington must confront the ‘Amazon economy’

  If Amazon has a legacy, it is the growing monopoly of power in the marketplace — all fueled by ever-increasing campaign contributions aiding both e-commerce giants and multinational entities. To balance the equation, Washington must stand up for labor rights, voting equity, government investment, job creation and the importance of small businesses. Otherwise, America’s workers will become increasingly impoverished and disenfranchised.

  The Hill May 7, 2021
• Elise Gould testimony for U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

  Our second witness is from the Economic Policy Institute. They are an economist who focuses on labor market trends, wages, and poverty in the United States. She has examined how the covid-19 pandemic is affecting the labor force and in particular, older workers. I want to thank her for being with us today and for sharing her expertise with the committee.

  C-SPAN May 7, 2021