Media clips
-
The result “says a lot about how much voters in both parties are looking for government and policymakers to do something about the state of wages in America right now,” David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said recently. “People want to see their paychecks grow, and this is a very easy, straightforward way to do it for a lot of people.”
Acorns November 13, 2020 -
“The Trump administration did not feel bound by whether actions were legal in many cases, and the Biden administration, appropriately, will be more careful,” said the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz, who was chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration and is now considered a contender for Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors.
The Hill November 13, 2020 -
“I think we’re likely to see a focus on relief and recovery efforts, in particular […] through a lens of what workers need to work safely in this moment,” Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs and legal counsel at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning policy think tank, told HR Dive. “No one having to return to work in an unsafe situation; looking at ways to ensure that workers are not denied employment insurance protections,” she added.
Restaurant Dive November 13, 2020 -
Over the last 30 years, more and more employers have been shifting from pensions plans to defined-contribution plans, as a cost-saving measure. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, the switch has hurt the retirement savings of Black and Latinx workers in particular.4 Pension plans are somewhat equally held across racial groups with 24% of White, 20% of Black and 9% of Latinx workers having defined-benefit plans. However, access to 401(k) plans is much less equitably distributed, with 49% of White workers having defined-contribution plans compared to 32% of Black and 20% of Latinx workers.13
Investopedia November 13, 2020 -
Treasury secretary would give Yellen a large platform for pushing progress, the opportunity to name a diverse team of economic advisors, and a chance to weigh in on wider changes to the government’s hiring culture. Opoku-Agyeman says she would be excited to see Black economists such as Lisa D. Cook, an economics professor at Michigan State; William E. Spriggs, chief economist to the AFL-CIO; or Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy included in discussions on how to alleviate economic and racial pain in the US.
Quartz November 13, 2020 -
That idea is emblematic of Biden’s approach. He has also championed a $775 billion program underwriting the cost of childcare and eldercare for American families and backs a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that would overhaul U.S. roads, bridges, trains and broadband systems while creating millions of jobs. The Biden Administration is also expected to push Congress to extend the $600 in expanded unemployment that expired at the end of July and to back an influx of federal cash to state and local governments, which have been forced by the economic collapse to slash programs benefiting American families, experts say. Colorado, for example, has increased Medicaid co-pays; California reduced firefighter pay by 7.5%; and Georgia slashed K-12 public school budgets by nearly $1 billion. Data suggests that Congress’s failure in 2008 to sufficiently bolster state governments delayed the economic recovery by four years, says Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and a former Labor Department economist.
Time November 13, 2020 -
With almost 12 million jobs yet to be recovered, the economy still faces a huge shortfall, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “For every 18 workers who were officially counted as unemployed, there were only available jobs for 10 of them. That means, no matter what they did, there were no jobs for 5.4 million unemployed workers.”
“The Biden administration will be facing a mounting, not waning, crisis,” Gould said of the task ahead for President-elect Joe Biden.
NBC News November 13, 2020 -
A 2019 study by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute concluded that manufacturing sector growth creates a multitude of secondary jobs in other sectors. Adding 100 manufacturing jobs to a community generates enough economic activity to create 289 additional jobs in other sectors, such as retail, food service, construction, logistics support and other “Main Street” businesses. By comparison, 100 new healthcare, hospitality or retail jobs yield only 69, 53 or 47 downstream jobs, respectively.
Penn Live November 13, 2020 -
We cannot say, however, that all the Biden voters voted for him because he ran as a challenger to the neoliberal economics and politics running the country since Reagan. There were probably not too many votes cast against Trump because he was on the wrong side of a wealth divide, a winner bunkered in with other winners looking at the losers bunkered in the cold outside. Or too many who voted for him because of the lousy way he treated those who worked on his real estate fiascoes, or because they wanted to end “the Trump administration’s consistent attack on workplace democracy—the ability of working people to elect representation in the workplace.” (McNicholas and Poydock, Report: Economic Policy Institute, Oct. 21, 2020)
Counterpunch November 13, 2020 -
The Trump administration also recently started requiring companies hiring H-1B visa holders to pay them more as a way to encourage domestic hiring instead. And some research has found that the program can push down wages for all workers. According to a recent study by the union-backed Economic Policy Institute, employers underpaid H-1B visa holders. Among the top employers using the program are Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook. EPI found all of them legally paid many of their H1-B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they filled.
Marketplace November 13, 2020