Jared Bernstein is a member of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. Previously, since 2011, he was a Senior Fellow and the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. From 2009 to 2011, Bernstein was the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Executive Director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and a member of President Obama’s economic team. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Bernstein was a senior economist and the director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, and between 1995 and 1996, he held the post of Deputy Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Washington Post
February 8, 2021
But as many leading economists have explained, Biden’s proposed spending limit is necessary to meet the challenge of the pandemic. 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 explained 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.” The letter also explained that the additional relief passed in December was insufficient:
Media Matters for America
February 8, 2021
The benefits of a $15 per hour minimum wage to low-wage and essential workers are enormous. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimate that it would raise pay for nearly 32 million workers while reducing government expenditures on public assistance programs by between $13.4 and $31 billion. EPI also found that the majority of the workers who would benefit from a $15 per hour minimum wage are essential and frontline workers. Moreover, a raft of recent research strongly indicates little risk of widespread job losses from an increase to $15 per hour.
The Brookings Institution
February 8, 2021
It would take approximately 29 years to get back to get back to pre-recession levels at the current pace of job growth, according to Heidi Shierholz, director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. (Her analysis uses the average growth over the past three months.)
“There’s a massive hole to fill,” said Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor.
CNBC
February 8, 2021
“All recessions hit low- and middle-income people harder, they disproportionately hit people of color,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor. “Recessions always exacerbate existing inequalities, but this one is just doing that more than we’ve ever seen before.”
VOX
February 8, 2021
“Another grim finding is that we’re down 1.3 million state & local government jobs since last Feb — most of it (nearly 1.0 million) in education. THIS IS A MINDBOGGLING UNFORCED ERROR. Fortunately, given the D majority in the Senate, Congress can pass aid to state & local govts,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, tweeted of the latest jobs report.
The American Independent
February 8, 2021
According to an independent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, “The Raise the Wage Act follows the lead of the growing number of states and cities that have adopted significant minimum wage increases in recent years.” Currently, proposed increases would raise wages for nearly 32 million Americans—including approximately a third of all Black workers and 25% of all Latino workers, the Institute says in its analysis. Among those to benefit, more than half would be women. If enacted, the resulting annual pay increase would amount to around $3,300 per year for the average worker, the analysis says. The proposed bill would also ensure that teen workers are paid at least the full federal minimum, by doing away with a subminimum wage for youth workers, while also ending subminimum wage certificates for workers with disabilities.
US Glass News Network
February 8, 2021
Deller pointed to studies that have compared the economic health of Wisconsin and Minnesota, which did not implement Act 10-style reforms. One such study, from the liberal Economic Policy Institute in 2018, found that Minnesota outpaced Wisconsin in the post-Great Recession economic recovery by nearly every available measure.
The Journal Times
February 8, 2021
Another 779,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits on a seasonally adjusted basis in the last week of January, the Labor Department said. For yet another week, claims were nearly four times the level of the same period last year, before the pandemic brought the nation to a standstill. This underscores once again that the jobs recovery isn’t in great shape as we near one year since the pandemic hit the US. It was also the 46th straight week that initial claims were higher than they were in the worst week of the Great Recession, wrote Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, on Twitter.
Florida Politics
February 8, 2021
Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick & Taylor Riggs bring you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before the closing bell on Wall Street and tackle the jobs report, the probe into Venmo and Super Bowl ads Guests Today: Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan, Robin Hayes of JetBlue Airways, Erik Nordstrom of Nordstrom, Jason Robins of DraftKings, Elena Hernandez of GenTrust, Steven Weiting of Citi Private Bank, Elise Gould of Economic Policy Institute, David Droga of Droga5.
Bloomberg TV
February 8, 2021