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
The housing disparities are especially pronounced along racial lines. Minority populations have always dealt with racism in the financial markets and redlining practices that keep communities segregated and unequal. But the pandemic is also exposing other racial inequities that make it even harder for minorities to become homeowners. For instance, while 30% of white workers can do their jobs remotely—and are thus more able to move to a city with a lower cost of living—only 20% of Black workers can do the same, according to a March study from the Economic Policy Institute.
Time Magazine
December 7, 2020
“Whatever lame-duck agreement may happen, we already know that it won’t be nearly enough, so it’s still essential for the Democrats to sweep in Georgia for the kind of stimulus package that economists have a large consensus as being needed, can also be potentially passed,” Heidi Schierholz, the director of the Economic Policy Institute, told AlterNet.
AlterNet
December 7, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated December 2 that 5.1 million more jobs would be created if the government kept open the suite of pandemic unemployment insurance programs in 2021, including the extra $600-per-week benefit.
Yahoo Finance
December 7, 2020
In the coming weeks some 12 million Americans will stop receiving unemployment benefits, the CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium will expire, student loan borrowers will resume payments on their debts, and other financial relief programs will expire.
“It’s kind of devastating,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
“We were already in this terrible situation now the caseloads are rising and the relief is going to end. What that means for the economy moving forward is, I hate to say it, but we could be seeing a double-dip to the recession.”
Friday’s jobs report made it clear to Gould that it is “absolutely necessary to reinstate and extend all the unemployment programs.” That would include Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which through the CARES Act, enabled gig workers, self-employed workers and independent contractors to qualify for unemployment benefits.
MarketWatch
December 7, 2020
“Good data is essential for policymaking in a crisis and we did not have that this time around, which is unacceptable,” Shierholz, now director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, tells Axios in an email. “[K]nowing exactly what happened so that we can make the investments to ensure this will never happen again is crucial.”
Axios
December 7, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, said holiday hiring in November didn’t make up for other factors slowing the recovery. She also noted expanded unemployment insurance benefits will expire the day after Christmas.
“This spells trouble not only for workers and their families who are desperately trying to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table—especially with the eviction moratorium also set to expire on December 31—but also for the recovery itself,” she wrote. “It didn’t have to be this way.”
Gould said over 5 million jobs could be created next year if lawmakers extended pandemic unemployment programs through 2021. She said relief efforts should focus on helping state and local governments.
Courthouse News Service
December 7, 2020
Even more concerning: The number of people who have been unemployed for 27 months or longer continues to grow. It grew by 385,000 in November to nearly 4 million people, more than a third of the total number of people without a job.
That figure is expected to hit 40 percent soon, mimicking the Great Recession, during which time the share of long-term unemployed remained at around 40 percent for three years, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
“The days of imagining a V-shaped recovery are over,” Gould said. “The easy gains we saw this summer of people on temporary layoffs getting rehired—that’s over. We are going to have to work hard to claw back all those jobs.”
The 19th
December 7, 2020
In June, Josh Bivens and David Cooper at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote that without more federal aid, we’re facing a result like this:
If policymakers do nothing at the federal level to address these shortfalls, the United States could end 2021 with 5.3 million fewer jobs, with losses in every state.
Daily Kos
December 7, 2020