But others say that with an estimated 33 million workers being harmed by the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, “It is terrible economics to pause stimulus talks.” That’s according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
She wrote that “the extra $600 in weekly UI benefits was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who, without it, have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting millions of jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs.”
MarketWatch
October 13, 2020
Almost 30 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point in 2019, an increase of 1 million people from 2018, according to recent Census data. The number of uninsured people increased in 19 states last year.
Additionally, as many as 6 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored insurance as the pandemic shuttered businesses and swelled the jobless ranks, the Economic Policy Institute estimated in August.
Bloomberg Government
October 13, 2020
Turmoil among independent restaurants is cascading down to a swath of suppliers, including many seafood companies and small farmers that mainly serve diners rather than supermarket customers. Every 100 restaurant jobs support 50 more at suppliers such as wholesalers and farmers, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal
October 13, 2020
As we stagger into the seventh month of the pandemic, the labor market remains deeply troubled. But while the coronavirus is hurting working people, especially lower-income workers, it is mainly exacerbating underlying inequalities in the economy, not fundamentally reshaping the job market. As the Economic Policy Institute reminds us with its new “Unequal Power” project, our labor policies need to restore worker power to push for greater equality, pandemic or no pandemic.
Forbes
October 13, 2020
Even as that began to change, though, the transition from domestic work into other professions wasn’t an equal one. During the 1960s, nearly 90% of Black women in the South still worked as domestic servants. Today, such work is still practiced most often by marginalized groups that have struggled to overcome racial and class barriers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 92% of domestic workers are female and 52% women of color. They’re also disproportionately immigrants, with noncitizens making up more than half of the nation’s housecleaning force.
Bloomberg
October 13, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute found that the consumer spending generated by that extra $600 per week supported over 5 million jobs, and that continuing the supplement through the middle of next year would have raised U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by a quarterly average of 3.7 percent.
Common Dreams
October 13, 2020
The real-world consequences of not passing new stimulus at this point in the crisis are ‘huge.’” – Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor under the Obama administration.
Shierholz, who currently works as a senior economist and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, also warned, “It’s literally millions of jobs in the balance here” and that because of the gap between the millions of unemployed and the limited available jobs, “no matter what they do, no matter how amazing they are, no matter how great their skills are, they won’t get a job because the jobs just aren’t there.”
Forbes
October 13, 2020
“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