The chief concern — echoed by city officials across North America, Europe and Asia — is the supposed impact on the affordability of local housing. “A reasonable reading of the available evidence suggests that the costs imposed on renters’ budgets by Airbnb expansion substantially exceed the benefits to travellers,” concluded a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington based think-tank. It drew on studies conducted in cities such as Boston and New York that found parallels between growing Airbnb activity and increased rent for locals.
Financial Times
December 7, 2020
Even before the pandemic, access to affordable, high-quality child care was shifting from an issue regarded as a personal and family responsibility to a matter of public concern, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. That’s partly because middle-class families were feeling the pinch as average annual costs for child care soared to roughly double the cost of in-state tuition at a public university.
The pandemic has exposed many fault lines in American society, and one of the most prominent has been the role of child care in keeping the economy moving. With schools and child-care centers closed and demands on working parents — mostly mothers — mounting, millions of women have left the workforce. Women’s labor-force participation rate in April fell to 54.7%, a level not seen since the late 1980s.
MarketWatch
December 7, 2020
Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, disagreed. Teachers not only ensure that children don’t fall further behind in their education, she said, but are also critical to the work force at large.
“When you talk about disproportionate impact and you’re concerned about people getting back into the labor force, many are mothers, and they will have a harder time if their children don’t have a reliable place to go,” she said. “And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can’t telework, they are disproportionately Black and brown. They’ll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue.”
New York Times
December 7, 2020
If conditions have been less than ideal for owners, they’re even worse for the workforce. According to One Fair Wage, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of tipped workers, the restaurant industry includes seven of the 10 lowest paying jobs in the country. People who work in the industry are twice as likely to need food stamps than the rest of the U.S. workforce, and according to the Economic Policy Institute, one out of six restaurant workers live below the poverty line. Although more restaurant employers have begun to offer healthcare benefits than did historically, perks like 401(k) accounts and paid parental leave are still vanishingly rare.
Medium
December 4, 2020
In addition to higher rates of infection among Black, Hispanic/Latinx and Native American communities, Black and Hispanic workers faced greater economic and health insecurity from the pandemic than White workers, the Economic Policy Institute reported in June. A report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute found that they also shouldered the worst burden through job losses and front-line work.
The Philadelphia Tribune
December 4, 2020
Wages for the richest 1% in the U.S. have soared 160% over the past four decades while the share of wages for the bottom 90% has shrunk, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute.
Yahoo Finance
December 4, 2020
The study by the Economic Policy Institute says retaining unemployment insurance programs set to expire this month and reviving enhanced federal unemployment payments — an extra $600 per week — would spur the projected growth in 2021.
UPI
December 4, 2020
As Congress continues to debate new pandemic relief, a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute finds extending and reinstating enhanced jobless benefits through 2021, in addition to getting the virus under control, could save or create 5.1 million jobs; boost GDP by 3.5%; and increase total personal income by more than $440 billion.
Reuters
December 4, 2020
The FPUC program expired on July 31, 2020. It provided eligible individuals with $600 per week on top of the weekly benefit amount they received from certain other UC programs, more than doubling what many Pennsylvanians would have received in traditional unemployment benefits alone. Economists believe that the U.S. economy weathered the coronavirus spikes in spring 2020 as well as it did in large part because of the additional income this program supplied to unemployed individuals and their families. We know that these dollars flow directly back into the economy. People used FPUC benefits to pay their rent or mortgage, to buy their groceries, and to continue discretionary consumer spending which helped support our fragile economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that renewing FPUC would drive the unemployment rate lower throughout 2021. On the other hand, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that ending FPUC has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs that would have otherwise been preserved by the boost in spending that FPUC provided. FPUC payments have added $16,113,457,128 to Pennsylvania’s economy between May 7, 2020, and December 1, 2020. Pennsylvanians have been struggling since FPUC expired on July 31, 2020.
Governor Tom Wolf
December 4, 2020
However, the above argument against the increase misses some important counterpoints. The purchasing power of the minimum wage is 17% less than it was in 2009 (Economic Policy Institute, June 17, 2019). In addition, the wage has not been adjusted to the increase in productivity and/or technical change over a period of time. The resulting increase in demand for labor due to productivity gains would absorb the increase in the number of workers attracted by higher wage, hence no unemployment. In addition, labor economists have argued that when workers are paid a wage rate that they deem to be fair, they are more loyal to their employers (thus decreasing turnover cost), work hard and increase productivity. Thus, the increase in productivity, labor force participation and increases in consumption expenditures would increase economic growth.
Standard Examiner
December 4, 2020