According to the Economic Policy Institute, a well-educated workforce can increase high-paying jobs for residents, strengthen a state’s economy and grow state coffers.
The Center Square
December 18, 2020
Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute said, “We will need more than one-shot policy activism and we will need to begin with those who are the very center of this pandemic recession.”
Black Star News
December 18, 2020
Anyway, back to unemployment. The Economic Policy Institute recently released new numbers showing, “Unemployment has especially skyrocketed for young workers in the COVID-19 labor market. . . . The overall unemployment rate for young workers ages 16–24 jumped from 8.4% to nearly 25% from spring 2019 to spring 2020 … Spring 2020 unemployment rates were even higher for young Black, Hispanic, and Asian American/Pacific Islander workers – close to 30% for all three groups.”
Counterpunch
December 18, 2020
The reduction of six weeks of unemployment payments would mean, according to researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, that some 11.2 million people would reach a “benefits cliff” at the end of February, as they would be unable to apply for state benefits while having exhausted their federal unemployment relief.
World Socialist Web Site
December 18, 2020
The pandemic-driven recession has caused immense pain across the United States, exacerbating existing economic and health disparities. After 22 million workers lost their jobs in March and April, the labor market saw a notable bounce back in May and June. Unfortunately, that progress was short-lived. Job growth has significantly slowed since then with payrolls increasing by only 245,000 in November. Employment remains 9.8 million below its pre-pandemic levels with notable deficits in leisure and hospitality, public-sector employment, and education and health services. Further, the recovery has been uneven across demographic groups: Black and Hispanic workers are experiencing a larger shortfall from their pre-pandemic employment rates than white workers. Overall, over 26 million workers are either unemployed, otherwise out of work due to the pandemic, or experienced a drop in hours or pay. The pandemic rages on as winter approaches and at least one million workers continue to file initial unemployment insurance claims every week.
Newsweek
December 17, 2020
“The concern isn’t so much ‘the robots are coming, and they’re going to put everybody out of work,’” says Ben Zipperer, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s more that the jobs being created by extremely profitable companies have either poor pay or poor working conditions, or are not the kind of jobs that you would expect an extremely rich country, and rich company, to be able to provide.”
Bloomberg
December 17, 2020
In late October as the coronavirus pandemic raged, the Economic Policy Institute released a study showing that it isn’t just morally right but an economic necessity to deal with poverty in this country and fast. “If America does not address what’s happening with visionary social and economic policy,” as that study put it, “the health and well-being of the nation are at stake. What we need is long-term economic policy that establishes justice, promotes the general welfare, rejects decades of austerity, and builds strong social programs that lift society from below.”
Truthout
December 17, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would increase the salary of 20% of wage-earning Americans. But this increase could also have a negative effect on employment. A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that this extra cost to businesses would indeed cause a drop in people living under the poverty line, but also the loss of 1.3 million jobs nationwide.
The Conversation
December 17, 2020
Las autoras del estudio son Emma García, economista del Economic Policy Institute y Teachers College, de la Universidad de Columbia, y Elaine Weiss, directora de políticas de la National Academy of Social Insurance e investigadora del Economic Policy Institute. / Europa Press
Ocio Latino
December 17, 2020
And now, a new report shows, their bosses are more likely to stiff them on wages. Between 2000 and 2019, the federal Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) conducted more than 31,000 investigations of farm employers, and 70 percent of them detected violations, according to data analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. That led to employers coughing up $76 million in back wages to 154,000 farmworkers, and $63 million in civil penalties for violations related to inadequate housing, transportation, and record-keeping.
The Counter
December 17, 2020