“The expiration of enhanced unemployment insurance benefits pulled $667 billion in purchasing power out of the economy in August alone,” per the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios
October 13, 2020
You can see what the average annual cost of infant and child care is in your state and get a sense if you’re paying far more or less than the average.
U.S. News and World Report
October 13, 2020
Economists say other relief policies have proved more effective at boosting the economy. For instance, an extra $600 in weekly unemployment pay helped bolster households that had suffered job or income losses — until it expired in July. In May alone, the program boosted personal income by $842 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
That money helped support local businesses, keeping the economy from collapsing under the impact of lockdowns. But Mr. Trump on Tuesday didn’t mention renewing the program as a standalone funding effort.
CBS Moneywatch
October 13, 2020
“Because most U.S. workers rely on their employer or a family member’s employer for health insurance, the shock of the coronavirus has cost millions of Americans their jobs and their access to health care in the midst of a public health catastrophe,” according to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CBS This Morning
October 13, 2020
Don’t just take my word for it, though. The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on (duh) economic policy, recently released a report outlining 50 ways that the Trump administration has been bad for workers. It’s a grim survey of the dozens of dirty tricks that Trump has pulled on organized labor, marginalized workers, and the U.S. working class in general in favor of corporate vampires and right-wing ghouls, all while insisting that he’s actually “fighting” for his own idealized version of the American worker.
Teen Vogue
October 13, 2020
“Under Trump, U.S. jobs are moving overseas even faster than before,” business website Quartz wrote in 2017. Two years later, the Guardian noted that since Trump became president, “nearly 200,000 jobs have moved overseas.” And just a few months ago, the Economic Policy Institute reported that between 2016 and 2018 — the most recent year for which data is available — “nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared” from the U.S. manufacturing base.
Bloomberg Quint
October 13, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute released a report in June that found Black and Latino low- and middle-income essential workers, like sanitation workers, have been disproportionately excluded from receiving extra compensation during the pandemic – even though they have greater concern and likelihood of contracting the virus. According to report author Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the institute, this disparity is a symptom of institutional racism as well the lack of power among many workers of color.
“It reflects their lack of bargaining power versus their employers, and reflects persistent discrimination,” said Mishel.
The report also speculated that as cities struggle with high unemployment rates and economic turmoil, meeting the demands for hazard pay will only get more challenging.
“I don’t think workers are compensated for risks even in the best of times,” added Mishel. “Now, with high unemployment, it is even harder to get.”
Waste Dive
October 13, 2020
As University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos put it in an excellent monograph for the Economic Policy Institute, the justices operated from a narrow, legalistic concept of freedom and equality: “The idea, which judges often made explicit, was that absent labor legislation employers and workers were each equally free to enter into, or refuse to enter into, contracts with each other. That is, the courts presumed that employers and employees had equal power in the labor market. “
Common Dreams
October 13, 2020
A May 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that 60 percent of H-1B positions certified by the DOL are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation.
The Hill
October 13, 2020
Career economists at OIRA appear to have been reluctant to sign off on DOL’s sunny forecast for workers’ wages, particularly because of murky available data.
“That removal following OIRA’s review is no surprise, given that a positive wage effect of the proposed rule can’t be supported,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former DOL chief economist during the Obama administration. “If anything, the available evidence goes in the opposite direction, with independent contractors earning less than similar employees.”
Shierholz’s current employer, the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, is among the outside groups that plan to fill in the data gap by submitting their own economic projections. Public comments are due in two weeks.
Bloomberg Law
October 13, 2020