Joining us is the senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute. we love having you on the program. We just had Jim Paulsen say jobless figures artificially high-end jobs will quickly come back. do you agree?
Elise Gould: I appreciate his optimism, but it is not as simple as that. We have had weakened demand for several months. yes, shuttering has been a problem. We want businesses to open up, but many people have suffered for many months, they are behind on their rent, their mortgage, not able to put food on the table. To think they are going to rush out and spend money is wrongheaded.
Bloomberg TV
January 11, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute noted that long-term unemployment, of 27 weeks or more, continues to rise, increasing by 27,000 in December.
Route Fifty
January 11, 2021
People wait for the bus on Park Street in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford. The top 1% of the families in Connecticut make 37.2 times more than the bottom 99%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Connecticut Mirror
January 11, 2021
Elise Gould at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, writes:
The latest Congressional relief bill is an important step toward addressing some of this pain, but it is not at the scale of the problem. I’m hopeful that more relief measures are on the horizon for increasingly desperate workers and their families. Senate Republicans forced the December bill to be far too small. Fortunately, with the Democratic majority in the Senate given the results of the Georgia runoffs, Democrats will now be able to get more relief measures through reconciliation. Top priorities must be aid to state and local governments and further extensions of unemployment insurance.
Daily Kos
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
Because of miserably inadequate federal benefits, even those workers with access to employment face the Catch-22 between going to work and risking infection and staying home and risking destitution. Less than one-quarter of the workforce worked remotely or from home over the last four weeks, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
World Socialist Web Site
January 11, 2021