The Economic Policy Institute reported that in 1998—the year of the project—about 30 percent of the workforce worked for under $8 an hour, so from the start the odds were stacked against her.
The American Prospect
September 21, 2020
An August 2020 update from the Economic Policy Institute showed that unemployment among Ohio’s African Americans was roughly twice the overall rate for the first half of this year. Disparities in educational opportunities play a role, along with the economic consequences of a “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Energy News Network
September 21, 2020
In other news, we look at how the West Coast wildfires are affecting farmworkers; a strike at the Tate London; Heidi Shierholz of Economic Policy Institute on a legal defeat for a regressive Labor Department rule; and a nonprofit unionization streak, with Kayla Blado and Katie Barrows of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union. With recommended reading on workplace safety in the midst of a pandemic, and why urban homesteaders are rebranding tenant farming.
Dissent Magazine
September 21, 2020
Elise Gould and Will Kimball, “‘Right-to-Work’ States Still Have Lower Wages” (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2015), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/
Center for American Progress
September 21, 2020
Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute (where I used to work) estimates that, without the first round of stimulus payments and beefed up jobless insurance, over 13 million people would have fallen below the poverty line.
“Unfortunately, the $600 supplementary unemployment insurance payment expired in July,” he writes in a blog.
“Senate Republicans blocking its renewal have increased poverty and hardship for millions of families in the middle of a pandemic that has caused widespread job loss and health devastation.”
Forbes
September 21, 2020
During his time in office, Trump has taken credit for the historically low unemployment rate for Black Americans, which hit 6.8% in early 2018. However, unemployment among white workers at the time was just 3.7%. Valerie Wilson, the director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, said that “even when we look at people with the same levels of education, we typically find that the Black unemployment rate is really close to, if not higher than, double the white unemployment rate.”
Marketplace
September 21, 2020
A report by the Economic Policy Institute published last month contradicted his claims, however. It found that far from reenergizing the so-called Rust Belt — former industrial areas of the northeastern US that had seen a sharp economic decline since the 1990s — more manufacturing jobs left the US than were created during Trump’s first two years in office.
The Washington-based think tank wrote: “President Trump’s erratic, ego-driven and inconsistent trade policies have not achieved any measurable progress, despite the newly combative rhetoric. On top of that, COVID-19 — and the administration’s mismanagement of the crisis — have wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in US manufacturing.”
Deutsche Welle
September 18, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, said the undercount of people in poverty was probably over 2 million. And when there are undercount issues, Shierholz said, people at the lowest income brackets and people of color tend to be affected the most. For example, lower-income Americans may have less stable addresses or phone numbers, or it might take more time and investment to build trust with a survey-taker.
“It’s not trivial,” Shierholz said. “It doesn’t change the broader story in these numbers … and the Census Bureau is being super transparent about this issue. But it’s an issue.”
Washington Post
September 18, 2020
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, told Newsweek that he did not see the debt as growing “all-that-exceptionally under the Trump administration” prior to the pandemic. However, Bivens criticized the Trump administration’s major economic legislation—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017—which was the main driver of increasing debt during the president’s first three years in office.
“I think that was an awful use of fiscal resources—funneling lots of money to already-rich households that didn’t need it,” the economist said. “I think we could’ve done a number of much more valuable things with those fiscal resources, but my real objection is the opportunity cost of the tax cut—what wasn’t done with those fiscal resources—rather than its effect in pushing up debt.”
Newsweek
September 18, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute estimates roughly 6.2 million out-of-work Americans lost employer sponsored health care with their job. About 85% of laid off workers were able to access health insurance through other options, with Medicaid enrolling about 4 million new insures, but millions have fallen through the cracks and remain uninsured.
Courthouse News Service
September 18, 2020