“There’s been a ton of stuff in this recession that, we don’t know exactly how it’s gonna play out,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, said. “And this—we know exactly how it’s gonna play out. Millions of people will lose their benefits on the day after Christmas, and there won’t be jobs for them. So they will just go to no income.”
KTVU-TV
November 30, 2020
This shift is coinciding with a pandemic that the SREB anticipates will leave more than half of the nation’s workers who were out of work in May with little or no chance to return to their same jobs, citing data from the Economic Policy Institute.
The group’s analysis showed that more than 5 million workers across the South will face this reality, and in Kentucky, it indicates that 180,000 are highly unlikely to be called back to work.
Bowling Green Daily News
November 30, 2020
The economy Biden will inherit, according to the Economic Policy Institute, is not pretty. About 25.7 million were “hit” by the COVID-19 downturn; 7 million are employed but with cuts in pay and hours; 11.1 million are officially unemployed; 4.5 million dropped out of the labor force; and 3.1 million are unemployed, but misclassified as employed and are not in the labor force.
The Western News
November 30, 2020
As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, the Economic Policy Institute has called for Congress to pass a $3 trillion relief package that provides assistance to working-class households as well as state and local governments, but little progress had been made on a deal before Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) adjourned the upper chamber for Thanksgiving recess.
Common Dreams
November 30, 2020
Child care is out of reach for many Wisconsin workers because of its cost. A minimum wage worker would have to work full time for 43 weeks to meet the cost of child care for one infant, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That analysis indicates infant care for one year costs more than in-state tuition for a four-year public college in Wisconsin.
Green Bay Press Gazette
November 30, 2020
Heidi Shierholz at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute writes:
[B]locking more COVID relief is not just cruel, it’s bad economic policy. UI is great stimulus. The spending made possible by pandemic UI benefits is supporting millions of jobs. Letting these benefits expire means cutting those jobs. There are now 25.7 million workers who are officially unemployed, otherwise out of work because of the virus, or have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic. And job growth is slowing. Stimulus is desperately needed.
Blocking stimulus is also exacerbating racial inequality. Due to the impact of historic and current systemic racism, Black and Latinx communities have seen more job loss in this recession, and have less wealth to fall back on. The lack of stimulus hits these workers the hardest, which means stimulus is a racial justice issue. Further, workers in this pandemic aren’t just losing their jobs—millions of workers and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to the COVID-19 downturn. Senate Republicans are failing struggling families.
Red, Green, and Blue
November 30, 2020
A famed Economic Policy Institute chart shows that productivity and wages, which previously had a tight correlation, began to break away in 1979. Since then, productivity has grown six times more than pay. More-productive workers should be paid a wage that matches their increased value, but in this 40-year stretch, the lion’s share of the benefits have gone to corporate treasuries and owners of capital. An analysis by the RAND Corporation released in September found that the bottom 90 percent of American workers would be taking home $2.5 trillion more per year if economic inequality were at the same level it was in 1975. That’s about $50 trillion transferred from one class to another.
The American Prospect
November 30, 2020
Since 2000, the United States has lost roughly 5 million manufacturing jobs and more than 91,000 factories. And as the Economic Policy Institute has reported, America’s ongoing trade deficit with China cost 3.7 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2018.
Boston Herald
November 30, 2020
“There are many middle-income, middle wage workers and their families who struggle to make ends meet without a single paycheck…this is not an isolated experience of a few people that are particularly low wage or low income,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “This is true for the vast majority of people in this country who don’t have, let’s say, $400, to pay for an unexpected expense.”
These folks may very well turn to credit cards, Gould said, which can have long term implications for their ability to secure credit in the future.
“Another big problem that’s happening right now is that people are facing eviction, because they didn’t have the money to pay for their rent,” Gould added. “And the ramifications of those kinds of financial losses on your record, can be long term and can offer, really, hardship in the future in terms of being able to secure credit, being able to rent another place.”
KTVU-TV
November 30, 2020
Have a mortgage, older kids but little to no retirement savings? Alas, that’s not unusual: In 2016, the average American ages 50 to 55 had retirement savings of only $11,000, according to The State of American Retirement Savings, a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
NerdWallet
November 30, 2020