When it comes to retirement, many Americans remain financially unprepared. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the median retirement savings balance for the typical working-age family is $5,000. The median savings for 32-to-37-year-olds is just $480.
Investopedia
November 30, 2020
The pandemic has exacerbated well-documented opportunity gaps that put low-income students at a disadvantage relative to their better-off peers,” said researchers from the Economic Policy Institute. “As a consequence, many of the children who struggle the hardest to learn effectively and thrive in school under normal circumstances are now finding it difficult, even impossible in some cases, to receive effective instruction.”
Kansas City Star
November 30, 2020
“De facto segregation, it turns out, is a myth. The reason we have segregation in every metropolitan area in this country is government policy. Federal, state, and local policy that was racially explicit that ensured African-Americans and whites could not live near one another.”
Historian, writer, and social chronicler Richard Rothstein is here to talk about histories and patterns of what he calls “purposeful race-based housing segregation.” He doesn’t paint a pretty picture, and he describes a concerted effort not just in major cities but in localities and towns all over this country. Why is this not taught in our schools? What is left out of the picture when we think about housing patterns and take a social overview of our cities?
Talking Beats
November 30, 2020
And those who need Covid economic relief the most — gig and other low-income workers who’ve lost jobs or hours to the pandemic — don’t have retirement accounts to withdraw from. Overall, the Economic Policy Institute reported last year, “nearly half of working-age families have nothing saved in retirement accounts.”
Inequality.org
November 30, 2020
“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