Media clips

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• What’s Left: The Democratic Party’s plan will revive the American economy

  Unfortunately, recent research by Yale University disqualifies this claim. Economists at the University found no evidence that the $600 unemployment benefits, initially sanctioned as a bipartisan effort (with Republican support), had reduced employment. In fact, research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute found that cutting the benefits established by the CARES Act would be “cruel and bad economics.” Extensions of the $600 weekly unemployment insurance do make economic sense then.

  Colgate Maroon-News October 2, 2020
• Shoring up health insurance during COVID: legislative watch

  It’s possible that as many as 12 million Americans might have lost health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 6 million people have lost coverage provided by their employers. Job losses as well as job changes have contributed to this, and further trouble may be ahead if employers, suffering from revenue shortfalls, find they can no longer afford to cover premiums.

  Governing October 2, 2020
• Millennials regret student debt more since pandemic

  “A lot of them graduated in the Great Recession, so they had difficulty being able to get on a career track and secure stable employment,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Now we have this shock of this recession, and that makes it even more difficult.”

  The Balance October 2, 2020
• Two months later, the end of the $600 boost to unemployment benefits is already causing a drag on the economy

  About 28 million workers are either receiving unemployment benefits or have applied recently and are waiting to be approved, including the 1.5 million people who signed up for benefits last week, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  …

  Total personal income in the U.S. took a $667 billion hit during August (on an annualized basis), according to EPI’s Josh Bivens, who based the analysis off new data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday.

  “It would have been more, but some of the enhanced $600 payments spilled over into August data,” Bivens writes. How does that translate to individual workers though? Bivens says you can think of it as an across-the-board pay cut for all U.S. workers, which adds up to a roughly 7% drop. In September, Bivens estimates that this “pay cut” will be closer to 10%.

  CNBC October 2, 2020
• October 2, 2020
  October 2, 2020
• Covid-19’s stunningly unequal death toll in America, in one chart

  Though redlining is no longer government policy, its consequences are still with us. According to the Economic Policy Institute, just 13 percent of white students attend a school that has a majority of Black students, while nearly 70 percent of Black students do. Black wealth trails badly behind white wealth; the former is more likely to live in an area with lower home values and, because of disparities in income, many Black Americans have not been able to build up enough wealth to buy a home in the first place.

  VOX October 2, 2020
• Pandemic may set women back for decades: report

  “We just cannot get out of this — the hole that we’re in — in any reasonable way, without doing huge scarring, without a much stronger care infrastructure,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told Bloomberg.

  The Grio October 2, 2020
• Mothers are 3 times more likely than fathers to lose their jobs during the pandemic

  Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNN that the pandemic’s impact on working moms will have long-term effects on their income and presence in the labor force. “We know that women still shoulder the majority of the responsibility for care work. When these care work demands go up it’s totally reasonable to assume that this falls more to women than men,” Shierholz told CNN. “Women will see income declines, because of cutting back hours and some will just end up dropping out. All of this exacerbates gender inequality.”

  Motherly October 2, 2020
• Layoffs loom for beleaguered US airline industry

  The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that failure to provide support to local government could cost 5.3 million jobs through 2021.

  Agence France Press (AFP) October 2, 2020
• California passes landmark law to study proposals for reparations

  In 2016, the typical white family had a net worth nearly 10 times that of a Black family, according to a Brookings Institute analysis. Moreover in 2019, the average wage gap between a Black and white worker in the U.S. was 26.5%, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  ABC News October 2, 2020