But even with uncertainty in the Senate, “there is no path to having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate” to increase the federal minimum wage, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based in Washington, D.C.
MarketWatch
November 10, 2020
A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, non-partisan think tank, estimated that around 6.2 million workers lost access to health insurance they got through their employers as a result of being let go since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. That figure takes into account workers who were originally laid off but have since found new employment.
MarketWatch
November 10, 2020
Liberals say the perception that Obama saved the banks in 2008 and 2009 while letting homeowners go bust sowed the seeds of Trumpism. “One of the things Democrats have learned is that unless there is real change, that working people really do feel a difference, we would be setting the stage for another Trump. A different Trump, but another Trump,” says Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “It is really important that economic growth is more broadly shared.”
Bloomberg Businesweek
November 9, 2020
In fact, one left-leaning think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, noted Black and African-American unemployment is still higher than total unemployment ever was in the Great Recession, when it peaked at 10% in October 2009. (Black and African-American unemployment was as high as 16.8% in both the Great Recession and the current pandemic-triggered recession.)
The Balance
November 9, 2020
Workers’ health insurance premiums are rising much faster than wages. Source: Economic Policy Institute
Jacobin
November 9, 2020
The latest decision to nix the agency’s previous lottery-based method of selecting visa petitions is an attempt to address an issue that observers of the H-1B program have previously highlighted. That is, the H-1B program’s prevailing wage levels mean workers can hire foreign talent at prices that are “significantly lower” than local median salaries for certain occupations, according to a May analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. The organization found, for instance, that three-fifths of 2019 H-1B jobs were certified at the two lowest prevailing wage levels.
CIO Dive
November 9, 2020
About a third of jobless Americans are now long-term unemployed, without a job and actively looking for six months or longer, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“That is a devastating number,” she said. “As this drags on, I expect those numbers to reach the levels we saw in the Great Recession.”
Marketplace
November 9, 2020
Daniel Costa, an immigration policy expert at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the index preferred by the Trump administration might produce bigger increases for some higher-skilled workers on farms. But the vast majority of guest workers would see smaller wages than they would have under the current system, hence the “transfer payments” going to employers.
In an analysis, Costa found that fieldworkers’ wages rose an average of 3.6% each year between 2010 and 2019 based on the survey; under the index proposed in the new rule, they would have risen at an annual rate of just 2.3%.
Over time, Costa said, the impact could be significant. The fact that guest workers would receive smaller pay hikes could soften wage increases for U.S. workers as well. The change would also allow farms to advertise lower pay than they would have under the survey, making the positions less attractive to U.S. workers.
Huffpost
November 9, 2020
Local and state governments, in fact, have cut 1.2 million jobs since July, says The Wall Street Journal. And Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reckons that 31 million Americans have been impacted economically by COVID. That includes the unemployed and folks whose wages have been cut. Sure, the employment picture seems better as the country added more than 600,000 jobs last month. But there will be a lot of restaurant and retail jobs at risk as the weather continues to cool. And we’re still 10 million jobs short of February’s totals, per EPI.
Newsweek
November 9, 2020