“President-elect Biden will inherit an economy that has been decimated by Trump, who not only presided over outright job losses during his tenure, but also enacted a litany of anti-worker policy decisions and squandered the labor market strength he inherited,” wrote Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Gould called on the new Congress to pass more aid for state and local governments in addition to extending unemployment benefits.
She called the job losses in December “an unequivocal disaster for the state of the economic recovery.” She noted the year ended with 9.8 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic began in February, and the economy is down 546,000 jobs since Trump took office in January 2017.
Courthouse News
January 11, 2021
“Until the virus is under control, until people can freely engage in economic activity again, there is one hand tied behind the economy’s back,” said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “That is totally different than what Obama-Biden faced when they came in.”
Washington Post
January 11, 2021
Higher-wage workers were six times more likely to be able to work from home than lower-wage workers, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute. The lower-wage workers who had to continue reporting to work risked continual exposure to the virus — and were more likely to live with family members over the age of 60.
Business Insider
January 11, 2021
All that said, mapping out this network of institutional and grassroots infrastructure is maddeningly complex. It includes the Democratic Party in its various incarnations, and closely allied national issue groups such as Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, or the League of Conservation Voters. There is also the labor movement; large donors; mass digital groups such as MoveOn; the new wave of post-2016 resistance groups such as Indivisible and Run for Something; established think thanks such as Public Citizen, Common Cause, Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, and Demos, which run from center to left; newer and younger groups such as Sunrise; and groups that reflect the new consciousness around racial justice and remediation such as Color of Change.
American Prospect
January 11, 2021
Workers with lower incomes and slim savings to fall back on may have a more difficult time waiting out long periods of joblessness and moving into new industries, economists say.
“The people who were least able to weather job loss, temporary or permanent, were the ones who were hit hardest,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy.
Reuters
January 11, 2021
Daniel Costa, abogado y director de Investigación de Leyes de Inmigración de EPI, indicó que esta nueva norma incentivará a los empleadores para que paguen a sus empleados inmigrantes salarios justos, acordes al mercado laboral de Estados Unidos.
“Esto, a su vez, mejorará el programa (de visas) al reducir el número de trabajadores H-1B mal pagados según las normas salariales de Estados Unidos, pero sin reducir el número total de visas H-1B que se emiten, y también protegerá los salarios de los trabajadores estadounidenses en situación similar”, dijo en sus comentarios a USCIS.
Dallas Morning News
January 11, 2021
To compare the price of education to wages over time, the cost of education has risen eight times faster than wages. According to data from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), since 1979 wages for the so-called middle class have only increased 6 percent — less than 0.2 percent each year — while low-wage workers’ wages have decreased 5 percent. Student debtors simply haven’t been paid wages sufficient to meet their basic needs.
The Hill
January 11, 2021
The need for enrichment can be met by reducing unpredictability in workers’ schedules and ensuring better pay for those who do work irregular or nontraditional hours. Scholars at the Brookings Institution and the Economic Policy Institute have identified a host of promising reforms in this arena.
The Hechinger Report
January 11, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that elimination of the 80/20 rule will cost workers $700 million annually.
The rule change, EPI argues, “will transfer large amounts of money from workers to their employers. We also find that as employers ask tipped workers to do more non-tipped work as a result of this rule, employment in non-tipped food service occupations will decline by 5.3 percent and employment in tipped occupations will increase by 12.2 percent, resulting in 243,000 jobs shifting from being non-tipped to being tipped.”
For example, EPI suggests that restaurant owners may require tipped workers to assume duties once done by cleaning crews, dishwashers or prep cooks, all of whom receive a full minimum wage.
Washington Post
January 11, 2021
The problem of the disconnect between the economy and the markets is that it is unsustainable long-term. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 1% take home 21% of all income in the United States, the largest share since 1928.
Investing.com
January 11, 2021