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
Economic Policy Institute
“This is a terrifying, but not surprising, way to end President Trump’s term, which has been bolstered by white supremacists who have sought to overturn the election results based on a massive misinformation campaign. Trump should be removed from office for his seditious actions, either by invoking the 25th Amendment or through impeachment.”
Common Dreams
January 8, 2021
As much as $3 trillion could be needed to ensure a swift economic recovery, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The left-leaning think tank noted that the most recent stimulus package omitted funding for state and local governments, which have seen a plunge in tax revenue due to the crisis.
CBS Moneywatch
January 8, 2021
Research by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and Howard University professor Ron Hira, who studies the H-1B, found that in 2019, IT staffing companies such as Infosys, Deloitte and Cognizant had applied for large numbers of H-1B workers at the second-lowest wage levels, while Bay Area technology giants Google, Apple, Cisco and Oracle had a mix of higher and lower levels.
The Mercury News
January 8, 2021
The reluctance of workers to press wage theft cases, usually out of fear of retaliation, is one of the reasons the practice is prevalent, worker advocates said. Between 2013 and 2015 about $50 million of wages were stolen from construction workers in Texas, according to a 2017 study by Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Houston Chronicle
January 8, 2021
Progressives say that test is an unreasonably high bar to clear, tougher than the three-part ABC test that has been adopted by some states and which formed the backbone of California’s AB 5. When the DOL rule was first proposed in September—delayed after months of departmental infighting—Rebecca Dixon of the National Employment Law Project said it was “yet another example of the Trump administration’s relentless push to stack the deck against workers at every turn,” and a way to “cheat workers” and avoid paying minimum wage. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, calculated it would cost workers at least $3.7 billion every year, in the form of reduced pay and benefits and more paperwork.
The Counter
January 8, 2021
The $900 billion stimulus bill passed by Congress at the end of December extended the PUA program through at least March but also added a new verification process that forces applicants to reapply in order to reduce fraud.
- That and President Trump’s delay in signing the bill is likely why the number of first-time PUA claims fell from more than 310,000 for the week ending Dec 26 to 161,400 during the week ending Jan. 2, Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Axios.
- That created “uncertainty/confusion about whether PUA would even exist,” she says. “I assume the drop is temporary.”
Axios
January 8, 2021
Black and Latino workers who remain employed in manufacturing were paid 23 to 25 percent less than similarly educated Whites performing the same tasks, according to a 2013 study by the Economic Policy Institute. Median weekly earnings in 2020 were $806 for Black workers and $786 for Latino workers, compared with $1,018 for White workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Washington Post
January 8, 2021
The slow recovery is only expected to exacerbate income inequalities that existed well before the pandemic, Bremmer said. Wages for the richest 1% of Americans have soared 160% over the last four decades, while wages for the bottom 90% have shrunk, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. Most white-collar jobs have shifted to work from home, while essential workers earning lower wages have taken on the biggest health risks, jobs that require face-to-face interaction.
Yahoo Finance
January 8, 2021
Am I suggesting that last spring’s economic impact payments of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child were a waste of money? I am not. According to the Economic Policy Institute, those payments lifted 8.2 million people out of poverty. But remember where we were last spring. The Covid-19 lockdown cratered the economy, with gross domestic product dropping by one-third. GDP rebounded over the summer.
New Republic
January 8, 2021