Media clips

---

• Walmart Says It Will Support U.S. Manufacturers With $350 Billion of Added Business

  Furner said the increased spending could support more than 750,000 new American jobs, based on a Walmart study with Boston Consulting Group that used data from the Economic Policy Institute and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  CNBC March 3, 2021
• These 15 charts show the inequalities Black Americans still face

  The pandemic has disproportionately affected the employment of Black and Hispanic workers. The Economic Policy Institute wrote in an analysis that Black workers are less likely to be in jobs that can be done remotely and more likely to be in jobs considered essential or in jobs that have experienced major job losses amid the pandemic.

  Business Insider March 3, 2021
• Rappahannock’s wealth drives down state funding for public schools

  But much of that wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a few dozen county residents. According to the most recent data available from the Economic Policy Institute, Rappahannock County ranks in the 17th percentile for income inequality when compared with all U.S. counties. That means the difference between what the top 1% of county residents earn and what the bottom 99% earn is among the highest in the country. And what’s more, Rappahannock County Public Schools estimates that 13-16% of Rappahannock families live below the federal poverty line.

  Rappahannock News March 3, 2021
• Jeff Immelt, who got over $200 million when he left GE, on high CEO salaries: The ‘good ones are probably worth more’

  The average CEO of a large public firm earns about 320 times as much as a typical worker, according to a report released in 2020 by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). CEO compensation has continued to surge and could rise again despite the pandemic, according to the report. CEO pay for the top 350 firms in the U.S. surged 14% in 2019 to $21.3 million. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%.

  MSN Money March 3, 2021
• Recent college grads face lack of opportunities during COVID-19

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate for workers ages 16-24 jumped from 8.4 percent to 24.4 percent between spring 2019 and spring 2020, while the rate for ages 25 and older rose from 2.8 percent to 11.3 percent.

  Flatland KC March 2, 2021
• CSPAN2 — U.S. Senate

  Contrary to popular misconceptions, most minimum wage workers are not teenagers according to the Economic Policy Institute. 59% of workers who would benefit from the federal minimum wage are women…two-thirds of them are the sole or primary bread winners of their family that count on the minimum wage. Nearly one in four workers who would receive a raise under a $15 minimum wage are Black or Latina women.

  C-SPAN March 2, 2021
• As more Americans slip into long-term unemployment, they face a new set of challenges

  But when workers lose unemployment benefits, the “scarring” effects of unemployment — like lasting lower wages — may worsen, according to a 2014 study by the Economic Policy Institute.

  “The primary economic damage that is larger for long spells of joblessness is the lower incomes that result from unemployment insurance benefits being cut off, which occurs roughly around six months in most states,” the study found.

  Time Magazine March 2, 2021
• Why the minimum wage debate is a women’s issue

  According to the Economic Policy Institute, this measure would help over 30 million workers see a pay increase.

  The majority of these workers will be women and people of color. According to the EPI, 59% of workers who would benefit from this wage increase are women. One in four of these women are Latina or Black. According to the National Women’s Law Center, nearly three-fourths of tipped minimum wage workers are women.

  UT Daily Beacon March 2, 2021
• ‘The cost of not acting’: How ineffective virtual learning could shrink students’ lifetime earnings

  These worst-case scenarios would be the results of doing nothing to mitigate students’ academic losses — “the cost of not acting,” said Emma García, an education economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  While Hanushek and García approach education economics from different viewpoints — the Hoover Institution is a conservative policy research organization, while the Economic Policy Institute leans left — they agree on some solutions to the potential enormous economic cost of lost learning.

  Those include focusing on personalized instruction for students and matching the best teachers with the neediest students.

  “If we are able to design the right interventions, and if we are able to allocate those to these students who need them most, and we are able to keep those in place for a lot longer, we would be actually doing ourselves a great favor,” García said. “We could be actually finding a way of addressing some of the pre-existing inequities and the ones that the pandemic may have exacerbated.”

  WLRN March 2, 2021
• Sinclair Broadcast Group is pushing the GOP’s national debt fearmongering attacks against the American Rescue Plan

  A letter from the leaders of the National Employment Law Center, the Economic Policy Institute, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Center for American Progress, and the Roosevelt Institute states that “President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan—with its critical public health investments to beat COVID-19, its aid to help struggling families, and its assistance to states, localities, tribes, and territories—is an appropriate scale of new spending under current conditions.”

  EPI research director Josh Bivens argued that the concerns that the bill might be too large should be ignored: “As background, we should simply note that after a generation of going too-small in providing fiscal support to aid the economy’s growth, a move to erring on the high side would be welcome. But even more importantly, the Biden package almost certainly does not err on the high side of what is needed to support economic recovery in coming years.”

  EPI’s Bivens has also argued for using debt to finance COVID-19 relief and recovery.

  Media Matters for America March 2, 2021