Between the last quarter of 2007, also the last quarter before the Great Recession, and the first quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate for White Kentuckians declined 1.1 percentage points, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Nationally, people of color have lost their jobs at a higher rate than White people, but Kentucky’s populations of color are too small for sample sizes that create accurate estimates.
Stateline
October 6, 2020
Continuing to increase wages makes sense because service workers face the same or worse financial challenges they faced pre-pandemic plus the health risks of working in public-facing jobs during a pandemic, said Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which supports higher minimum wages.
He also noted generally broad public support for wage increases, demonstrated by successful ballot measures such as those in Arkansas and Missouri in 2018.
“We’ve heard a lot of noise about” states being urged to postpone wage increases, “but not much definitive action,” he said. “One of the reasons why critics of the minimum wage haven’t been very successful at winning delays is that minimum wages are actually a pretty popular political issue.”
Bloomberg Law
October 6, 2020
As the free-trade consensus began to erode, studies from the Economic Policy Institute and other organizations confirmed the gut feeling of average Americans: Millions of jobs were being lost to China.
Asia Times
October 6, 2020
In the United States, the average K-12 public school teacher makes around $60,000 per year according to 2018-2019 National Education Association reports. In my opinion, teachers should be some of the highest paid professionals in the United States or in any country. There are no doctors, lawyers, meteorologists and Presidents without science, math, language arts, and history teachers. Yet, a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute found that not only is the teacher shortage real, it is growing. Some of the key findings in the report include:
- 13.8 percent of public school teachers in the U.S. are either leaving their school or the profession.
- Schools are struggling to fill vacancies because of dwindling applicant pools.
- Over the period 2008–2009 to 2015–2016 school years, there was a 15.4 percent decline in education degrees awarded (also a 27.4 percent decline in completion of teacher preparation programs).
Forbes
October 6, 2020
“At the current slowing rate of job growth and expected continued drag from austerity as federal policymakers fail to act, weakness in the labor market is expected to drag on for years and those workers will be left out in the cold well before they are able to get back on their feet,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post.
CBS Moneywatch
October 6, 2020
Repealing the ACA would strip nearly 30 million people of their health insurance, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. Particularly in New Hampshire, the number of uninsured households would skyrocket by 190 %, or by 118,000.
The New Hampshire
October 6, 2020
Of the 22 million jobs lost in March and April, only about 11.4 million have been recovered.
“At this pace of slowing job growth, it will take years to return to the pre-pandemic labour market,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote in a Friday note.
Al Jazeera
October 6, 2020
Education is not to blame for the racial wage gap in America. A significant Black-white wage gap persists at all levels of education, according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute. Even Black individuals with advanced degrees earned 17.6% less than their white counterparts.
Yahoo Finance
October 6, 2020
Outdated unemployment insurance systems in some states collapsed from the influx of applicants who lost their job during the pandemic. As a result, only 71% of applicants received benefits by April 11, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Mooresville Tribune
October 6, 2020
Job gains during the month of September, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday, were weaker than expected. One of the main drivers: job losses in public education.
Employment in local government education, or jobs largely in the K-12 public school system, dropped by 231,000 last month, the BLS reported. Employment in that sector is down by 570,300 from this time last year, according to an analysis of BLS data by Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
MarketWatch
October 6, 2020