“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.”
None of the unemployment extensions are retroactive, and some are less generous than the proposals put forth by Democrats earlier in the pandemic. The $300/week top-up, for instance, is half of what the Democrats wanted. The CARES Act enacted in March, which included a $600/week enhancement that expired July 31, has been credited with preventing jobless Americans from falling off an income cliff early in the pandemic—and even allowing many to save. But in the five months since those extra benefits have expired, recipients have blasted through their savings, and then some.
The lack of retroactivity for these new benefits, “is a terrible missed opportunity to alleviate suffering and help the economy,” says EPI’s Shierholz.
Mother Jones
December 22, 2020
There is a lot of good news coming out of this new round of economic relief but the president of the Economic Policy Institute says it neglects state and local aid. She says she fears this will cause additional hardship going into the new year. “States and localities are running out of money…and they are going to be forced to cut back on essential public services like public health, like schools, that we all count on.” Thea Lee says those cuts will lead to layoffs and even more economic repercussions. She also says Congress will need to address state and local aid when they get back to work next year and that funding could help get kids back into the classroom safely.
Hearst Television
December 22, 2020
For preemption, see Economic Policy Institute, “Worker rights preemption in the U.S.: A map of the campaign to suppress worker rights in the states,” available at https://www.epi.org/preemption-map/ (last accessed September 2020)
Center for American Progress
December 22, 2020
A government survey cited in an August report from the Economic Policy Institute found that for every 100 workers who lose employer-provided insurance, eighty-five retain access to some form of coverage. (See sidebar on page 36 for details.)
The Progressive
December 22, 2020
Earlier this month the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) published newly available wage data documenting the continued rise in wage inequality. Social Security Administration data collected by the EPI presents the cumulative change in wages and the upward shift of wage income in favor of the wealthiest social layers since 1979.
World Socialist Web Site
December 22, 2020
“The package is a fraction of what is required to address the monumental economic damage caused by [the] inadequate response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Thea Lee, president of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement. She added that it would take roughly $3 trillion to “stop the economic bleeding … and build a strong recovery.”
CNN Business
December 22, 2020
Even before the pandemic began, almost half of all U.S. families reported lacking any retirement savings beyond Social Security, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
McKnight’s Senior Living
December 22, 2020
Wage theft is particularly rampant among farmers and farm labor contractors who employ H-2A workers, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. Last year, the Department of Labor identified 12,000 labor violations in the H-2A program. The vast majority of those were wage violations. According to the Labor Department, farmers owed 5,000 workers a total of $2.4 million in back wages. Farm labor contractors were by far the most egregious offenders. Because many employees choose not to file complaints out of fear of retaliation, these numbers likely paint only a partial picture of the situation.
…
Fixing the H-2A program’s broken wage system would involve a series of regulatory changes at the Department of Labor. That would be fairly easy for the incoming Biden administration to implement, according to Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute and the author of the report on H-2A wage violations. The proposed wage freeze is already the subject of several lawsuits filed by Farmworker Justice on behalf of the UFW. If the wage freeze is found to be invalid, the Biden administration could simply choose not to litigate it further. Even if the wage freeze goes into effect, the new secretary of labor could choose to publish new regulations to supersede the Trump administration cuts.
New Republic
December 22, 2020
Heidi Shierholz with the Economic Policy Institute told Marketplace that the economy is backsliding without more stimulus spending to help shore up state and local government budgets.
“What happens in recessions is state and local governments see a big drop in revenues, because people have less money to spend,” Shierholz said. “Unless the federal government steps in to fill in their budget shortfalls, they have to make big cuts.”
She said that after the Great Recession, Congress didn’t provide enough relief to state and local governments, which meant they had to make big cuts.
That, she said, probably delayed recovery by over four years.
NPR Marketplace
December 22, 2020
“We just made this mistake. It would be less utterly infuriating if we hadn’t,” said Shierholz, who is a senior economist and the director of policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. During the Great Recession, she said, “it’s very straightforward and simple that austerity, severe austerity at the state and local level, caused by not getting enough federal aid, delayed the recovery by years. It didn’t have to be that way, but we made policy choices that allowed it.”
Huffpost
December 22, 2020