“The longer you are out [of a job], the more damage it can do,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank and former chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration.
CNBC
October 13, 2020
There is the official unemployment rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was 7.9% as of September. That equates to about 12.6 million people.
In normal times, that’s more or less the best measure of how many people are out of work, according to Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor. But these are not normal times.
Marketplace
October 13, 2020
As the Economic Policy Institute’s Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman noted this summer, Holder believes that any and all economic relief policies should be centered directly on improving economic outcomes for Black women, specifically. EPI explains:
“Black women are the core of the nation’s economy, holding the front-line jobs and running small businesses, and they are more often the single heads of households in their communities. If they are elevated through policy, including everything from paid sick leave to stimulus programs targeted directly toward them, the economy at-large will benefit.”
Business Insider
October 13, 2020
On this episode, you’ll hear from:
Seritta Norige, former Disney World employee
Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, Economic Policy Institute
Julie Schecter, Skimm’r
Tappan Vickery, director of voter engagement, Headcount
Salvatore Attardo, professor of linguistics, Texas A&M University
Skimm This podcast
October 13, 2020
It’s unclear whether DOL can still set AEWRs for 2021 without the USDA farm labor survey. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that it might simply choose to retain this year’s AEWRs for next year. This would avoid a potential significant pay cut, but it wouldn’t reflect any wage increases observed in 2020.
The Counter
October 13, 2020
Research co-authored by Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, shows that shift Nair described in employer behavior. In 2015, 41% of approved labor condition applications were for level one wages, while in fiscal year 2018, only 16% of approved labor condition applications were level one. “They basically all shifted to level two,” Costa told Bloomberg Law.
Costa contends the new increase in wage levels likely won’t result in fewer H-1B visa holders in the U.S.
For fiscal 2019 data, more than 300,000 employer applications for level three and level four H-1B wage earners were approved, far in excess of the number of visas actually issued, Costa said. So even if all employers seeking H-1B workers at a level one or level two wage stopped sponsoring those workers because their salaries would be too costly, there would still be many more applicants for H-1B jobs than the number of H-1B petitions approved last year, he said.
Bloomberg Law
October 13, 2020
Happily, the Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has just launched a project on Unequal Power. It is the indispensable frame of analysis for political and economic comprehension and action.
The project has commissioned two dozen reports from historians, economists, political scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars. The first paper, by Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan who was once law clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explains just how conservative courts have taken us back to the pre–New Deal era in undermining worker rights legislated by Congress.
With worse to follow if far-right Republicans tighten their grip on the courts. You need to read this.
The American Prospect
October 13, 2020
Nearly 27 million workers are either receiving or have applied for unemployment benefits, including the 1.3 million who filed for either state or federal pandemic benefits just last week, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Senate Republicans let a weekly $600 unemployment benefit for workers impacted by the pandemic expire in July, and funding for a $300 weekly benefit provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Trump’s direction is already exhausted in states across the country. FEMA will be unable to provide more emergency unemployment funding unless Congress agrees on a stimulus.
Truthout
October 13, 2020
A 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that for every 100 professional, scientific and technical services jobs created in the private sector in the U.S., 418 additional, indirect jobs are created as a result. Nearly 575 additional jobs are created for every 100 information jobs, and 206 additional jobs are created for every 100 healthcare and social assistance jobs.
TechCrunch
October 13, 2020
Yes on 22 has positioned worker flexibility at the center of its
television and social media campaigns, and indeed, for many workers the ability to work whenever they want by just opening an app is very appealing.
But contrary to the Yes campaign’s positioning, there’s nothing in California law that prevents companies from providing such flexibility to workers, regardless of employment status, as some labor experts have pointed out. Terri Gerstein of the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program and Economic Policy Institute called it a
“faux concern.”In fact, it’s spelled out in
AB-5 that “nothing in this act is intended to diminish the flexibility of employees to work part-time or intermittent schedules or to work for multiple employers.”
CNN Business
October 13, 2020