Per a Tuesday morning release from the Economic Policy Institute, local and state aid, plus corporate immunity provisions, were big sticking points that delayed a second round of relief. Neither piece was included in Monday’s deal.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
December 23, 2020
“This is a lot better than nothing,” says Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “But it is not enough. Millions of people will exhaust those benefits in the middle of March.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution
December 23, 2020
Amid this abundance of material, a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has received considerable attention and might serve as an example. The EPI clearly wants Congress to renew some of the expiring parts of the CARES Act passed last spring. In particular, it wants to continue unemployment insurance for an additional 13 weeks beyond the usual time and reinstate the $600.00 additional weekly unemployment payout that expired last July and that more recent legislation has modified. The report’s headline claims boldly that such reinstatements will “create or save 5.1 million jobs” in 2021.
Forbes
December 23, 2020
But Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and a Labor Department economist during the Obama administration, told the Wall Street Journal that the rule does not address wage inequality, and instead could shift work to servers that would traditionally not fall to them.”If the administration wanted to raise pay for back-of-the-house workers, they could have supported a minimum-wage increase,” Shierholz said.
FOX 2 Detroit
December 23, 2020
Pantone advises, “Ultimate Gray and Illuminating do not have to be used in equal proportions,” which also holds for the haves and the have-nots. Indeed, the COVID period is exacerbating the underlying trends of inequality that have been at play for decades. An analysis by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, focused on data from the Social Security Administration to find that over a forty-year period (1979–2019), the top 1% (2019 average of $758,434) saw their wages grow by 160.3%; and those in the bottom 90%had annual wages (2019 average of $38,923) grow by 26%. “These disparities in long-term wage growth reflect a major redistribution upward of wages since 1979.”
MSN Money
December 23, 2020
- “It’s really, really clear this is about the interests of corporate executives and shareholders,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at EPI, told Business Insider.
Business Insider
December 23, 2020
With the economy down about 10 million jobs, the surge in cases will further hinder gains and could even drag the labor market into a new decline, Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said.
Business Insider
December 23, 2020
Many economists also expressed the need for more Covid-19 stimulus in 2021. For example, the progressive nonprofit Economic Policy Institute
estimates that roughly $3 trillion in relief is needed to “stop the economic bleeding caused by the coronavirus pandemic and build a strong recovery.”
CNN Business
December 23, 2020
Though the Department of Labor says this could raise take-home pay for many restaurant workers, especially back of the house workers, labor groups and activists aren’t so sure. The Economic Policy Institute says the new rule would take $700 million annually away from workers. “The new regulation from the Trump administration does away with [the 80/20] protection, replacing it with vague, much less protective language,” EPI said in a statement, arguing that the rule’s ambiguity will make it difficult to enforce, and likely inspire employers to shift work from non-tipped to tipped workers in order to save money. In a previous report, EPI estimated this rule could result in “243,000 jobs shifting from being non-tipped to being tipped.”
Eater
December 23, 2020