And, even if and when Congress does free up funds, no stimulus package will be able to mitigate the consequences if a conservative majority on the Supreme Court rules the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in the coming months. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that nearly 30 million Americans could lose their insurance, rendering them peculiarly vulnerable to economic devastation if they fall ill, and more than a million workers could lose their jobs in health care fields.
Truthout
October 26, 2020
The stock market has improved overall in the months since COVID-19 shutdowns spurred a recession, which is good news for some investors, but millions of working Americans are still hurting. While the number of new unemployment claims is slowly shrinking, at least 24 million people were receiving or waiting unemployment claims last week, and job growth is slowing, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Last week was the 31st straight week that total initial claims — about 1.1 million — were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession.
Truthout
October 26, 2020
Top UK corporate execs currently average 126 times the pay of average British workers, a gap substantially wider than the corporate pay divide in the rest of Europe but far lower than Corporate America’s astounding gap. U.S. CEOs, the Economic Policy Institute reports, last year averaged 320 times the compensation of average workers in their industries, up from 31.4 times in 1978.
Inequality.org
October 26, 2020
Yet, for the first half of the Trump administration, during 2017 and 2018, real income growth for the typical household grew at less than half the rate it did in the two years before he took office, according to a previous analysis by Capital & Main and the Economic Policy Institute. All but two states experienced a trend of slower growth in median household income for the first two years of Trump’s presidency compared to the prior two years. The poorest households also saw slower income growth in Trump’s first two years compared with Obama’s last two years.
It was only in 2019 that the picture brightened for many Americans. The low unemployment rate and prolonged expansion likely led to rising incomes in 2019 as more people found jobs in a tight labor market, says David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute.
Capital and Main
October 26, 2020
Donald Trump’s banner is “Fighting For You,” however, Trump’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act, created a permanent income tax break that benefits the top 1% economically with 83% of the benefit going to them by the year 2027. The middle class tax cuts are temporary and stingy. One result of this tax cut is continuation of offshoring of profits and actual jobs. From 2016-2018, almost 1,800 factories have been lost and 740,000 jobs since February 2020 as stated by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Journal Times
October 26, 2020
Unemployment hits Latinx women harder because they are more likely to be the head of a single family and are the primary caretakers at home, caring for sick relatives and helping children navigate distant learning in this pandemic — an added stress, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
…
Latinx women are heavily employed in some of the industries hardest hit by COVID-19. In the hospitality industry alone 14.6% of Latinas make up the workforce, higher than whites at 9%, as well as Latinx men at 11.6%. Retail and “other services” also employ a large percentage of Latinas, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In April one in five Latinx women workers were unemployed.
NPR
October 26, 2020
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, argues lifting wages would boost workers’ incomes during a period when wage growth tends to sharply slow down and even decline.
“Workers really need the money during a downturn, especially the one now when high levels of unemployment are putting significant downward pressure on wages,” Zipperer told Business Insider. “That’s especially true for people at the bottom of the wage distribution where a lot of the employment losses have been in the pandemic.”
Business Insider
October 26, 2020
This highlights why the 1980s supply-side tax philosophy is badly out of date. It made sense that the economy took off when President Ronald Reagan dramatically dropped the top bracket from 70 to 50 percent and then to 28 percent. When Republicans now argue that small reductions are going to have similarly spectacular results, they are selling snake oil. As the Economic Policy Institute put it, “After decades of tax cutting, it is clear that top tax rates are well shy of revenue-maximizing rates. … Economic research does not support claims of large supply-side growth effects in the second half of the 20th century.”
Washington Post
October 26, 2020
The longer the pandemic drags on, the larger the backlog of young people, according to Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould. Older workers could take jobs that would typically go to entry-level applicants, Gould said.
Employers “don’t necessarily even have to pay more to get workers with more experience,” Gould said. “So those young workers may be left out.”
Bloomberg
October 26, 2020
Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposal would not have as large of an impact on the overall economy as a stimulus package might, says Elise Gould, senior economist for the Economic Policy Institute. But “from a microeconomic standpoint, to those individuals that are affected, this could be huge,” she says.
“For one, it may open up the range of jobs that people can take because they don’t just have to chase the highest paying jobs to pay off loans,” she says. “So we might see better matches in terms of people using their college degree, or their training, or pursuing their passions — just more efficient matches between workers and jobs.”
Gould adds that loan forgiveness might also allow more young workers to pursue traditional markers of adulthood, such as buying a home or starting a family, which many have been forced to delay because of student debt.
CNBC
October 26, 2020