But teaching has been in crisis before March. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the country has lost 60,000 jobs in education, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Not only that, but 247,000 more teaching jobs should have been created to keep up with growing student enrollment as the population increases. This has resulted in a shortfall of 307,000 teaching jobs — meaning over 300,000 educators are currently needed right now.
Business Insider
September 22, 2020
q. thirteen news this morning rocking a little earth wind and fire to get things rolling here for the new school year- proving to be a major challenge for everyone students parents and teachers and now consider the fact that teachers are paid almost 20% less than similar workers according to a new study. The Economic Policy Institute finds teachers who generally get better benefits than similar workers are still grossly underpaid taking into consideration education, experience, and demographic factors. Teachers are paid about 19% less than similar workers and the study also found the teachers in our state are among the eight lowest paid in the nation. The study authors say teachers deserve fair pay especially during a pandemic when their personal safety is at risk and they also say the pay gap is forcing good teachers out of the profession and discouraging young people to pursue teaching careers.
Q13 FOX
September 22, 2020
Between February and May the number of Davidson county residents in their early 20s that received unemployment benefits rose nearly six times.
Senior economist Elise Gould with the Economic Policy Institute says the Great Recession showed us how being unemployed early stays with you.
“Starting a career at that point can be hugely detrimental for your lifetime earnings, for your wages, for whether or not you’re going to have unemployment spells throughout your career,” Gould says.
Nashville Public Radio
September 22, 2020
What little economic lifeline some households have been relying on could soon end. As Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at Economic Policy Institute, wrote Thursday:
Another 1.5 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week. That includes 860,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 659,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. It provides up to 39 weeks of benefits, but it is set to expire at the end of this year.
Last week was the 26th week in a row total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession.
Common Dreams
September 22, 2020
The racial wage gap has widened considerably over the last 20 years thanks in part to wage discrimination. A study by the Economic Policy Institute last year found that even Black workers with an advanced degree are paid less than their white counterparts. Controlling for age, gender, education, and region, Black workers are paid 14.9% less than white workers.
Business Insider
September 22, 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
September 22, 2020
Some advocates of reforming the H-1B program are also skeptical.
“If they really had prioritized this and cared about it, they would have done it months ago, if not years ago,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Reuters
September 22, 2020
According to an Economic Policy Institute analysis, from 1948 to 1979 productivity from labor grew 108.1% while compensation for those laborers grew 93.2%. It was a win-win for owners and labor alike. But starting in 1979 things changed dramatically. Companies were able to use physical capital and technology (robots) to replace labor and to fuel growth. Without the need for more humans, they also didn’t have to pay humans more as productivity grew. From 1979 to 2018 productivity grew 69.3% while compensation grew only 11.6%.
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
September 22, 2020
In the survey, conducted by the New York Fed every four months, people under 45 said the minimum salary they would accept for a new job had risen 10% between March and July, climbing to an average of $68,655—the highest since at least 2014, the report released Monday showed. By contrast, workers over 45 demanded a slightly lower so-called “reservation wage” averaging $60,168 in July compared to $61,261 in March.1
Although the increase may seem counterintuitive, it could reflect the reluctance of people who still have jobs to make a change in an uncertain labor market, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute think tank and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Barack Obama. Another possible factor is the increased risk of working during a pandemic, particularly for younger workers who have occupations that require heavy social contact.
“If you are out of work, your reservation wage probably doesn’t go down as far if the jobs are all of a sudden a ton more dangerous than they were before,” Shierholz said.
The Balance
September 22, 2020