The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said workplace democracy and ability of working people to unionize was key to protect their rights.
Thompson Reuters
October 30, 2020
Valerie Wilson, an economist at the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, said that policy response to COVID-19 must acknowledge its effects on many racial groups. She added that no policy is ever race-neutral.
Wilson said that there is going to be a differential impact because society is structured. She added that the Black unemployment rate had been twice the size of the white rate.
Latin Post
October 30, 2020
Typically, there are enough applications submitted at the two highest wage levels to meet the cap, said Ron Hira, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, D.C., and an associate professor of political science at Howard University. Hira co-authored a May 2020 report at EPI that found 60 percent of H-1B positions certified in fiscal year 2019 were assigned the two lowest prevailing wage levels, which were “significantly lower” than the local median salaries surveyed for occupations.
Society for Human Resource Management
October 30, 2020
Economists say other relief policies have proved more effective at boosting the economy. For instance, an extra $600 in weekly unemployment pay helped bolster households that had suffered job or income losses — until it expired in July. In May alone, the program boosted personal income by $842 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CBS News
October 30, 2020
Bernstein arrived in Washington in 1992 to work under labor economist Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning, labor-aligned think tank founded six years earlier at a time when pro-free trade, anti-union philosophy dominated economic thought. The duo—”the Lennon and McCartney of economics,” Mishel recalls Bernstein calling them—uncovered what was then a new and concerning development: The economy was more productive than ever, but workers’ wages remained flat. They placed the blame for that on the policy choices that had decimated worker power. “[Bernstein and Mishel] were pushing that at a time when that was seen as a very, very strange view,” says Dean Baker, a labor economist who worked with Mishel and Bernstein at EPI and co-authored books with Bernstein on full employment.
Mother Jones
October 29, 2020
The numbers are particularly devastating for nonwhite women. In April, the unemployment rate hovered around 17% among Black women and 20% for Latina women, compared to about 15% for white women and 12% for white men, according to data from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
VICE
October 29, 2020
That makes sense, considering that younger generations are the most likely to be unemployed or underemployed because of the pandemic, according to research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Unemployment rates among Gen Z (defined here as those ages 16 to 24) saw a significant increase, jumping to 24.4% in April, May and June. That’s up from a higher-than-average unemployment rate of 8.4% during the same period in 2019.
About half, 49.6%, of Americans got their health insurance through their employer last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But because of layoffs during the pandemic, as many as 12 million Americans have lost their health coverage, the Economic Policy Institute estimates.
CNBC
October 29, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator was used to determine the local cost of living, which includes housing, food, health care, transportation and other necessities. In many of the locations examined in the study – which identified the region in each state where the cost of living is lowest – housing costs can account for less than 15 percent of total living expenses.
The Center Square
October 29, 2020
At the same time that home prices have gone up, wages for the average worker have failed to keep pace. Research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that while wages for high-income workers grew steadily since the 1980s, middle- and low-income workers have actually seen their wages stagnate or even decline after adjusting for inflation.
Napa Valley Register
October 29, 2020
Josh Bevins, an analyst with the Economic Policy Institute points out, for instance, that “because the COVID-19 shock has been so centered in low-wage sectors, any given dollar value of GDP lost translates into far more people who have lost jobs.” When economic power is in the hands of a few and gains (and losses) are unequally distributed, GDP growth (or decline) can cover up the extent to which the rich are getting richer or hide the negative impact on workers.
People's Weekly World
October 29, 2020