“We’re facing a crisis on two fronts,” said Valerie Wilson, who directs the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “There is both a recession, which is an economic crisis, and a public health crisis. We find that those underlying structures and inequalities simply replicate themselves through our current situation.”
The Undefeated
October 16, 2020
The national minimum wage was created in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the rate at 25 cents an hour. It has risen in fits and starts in the decades since, but it has not kept pace with the country’s cost of living. According to a 2019 analysis done by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, after adjusting for inflation, the minimum wage reached its peak value in 1968. Today, the minimum wage is worth 31 percent less than it was in 1968 and 17 percent less than it was even as recently as 2009, the last time the national rate was increased, to $7.25 an hour.
Sarasota
October 16, 2020
The shortage “is large, growing, and worse than we thought,” warns the latest report from the Economic Policy Institute’s “Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market” series.
District Administration
October 16, 2020
In Michigan, unemployment is high, wages are low and the gap between the rich and poor is only widening. The top 1% take home 17.8% of all the income in the state, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Yahoo Finance
October 16, 2020
But receiving those benefits, which are administered by the states, isn’t so easy, experts say. “The transition from regular state benefits to P.E.U.C. is not going smoothly,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group.
If the program is not extended by Congress, “we’re going to see a disaster,” Ms. Shierholz said. “There will be a huge drop in living standards and an increase in poverty as well as downward pressure on economic growth.”
The New York Times
October 16, 2020
Atlantic Magazine event on small businesses featuring Heidi.
Atlantic Magazine
October 16, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., carried out an analysis of primary and secondary education that, it said, illustrated “a widespread digital divide based on family income.”
“Nearly 16% of eighth-graders overall, and almost a quarter of eighth-graders who are poor, don’t have a desktop or laptop computer at home on which to follow their classes,” EPI researchers Emma García, Elaine Weiss, and Lora Engdahl wrote. “About 8% of eighth-graders who are not poor lack access to these essential devices.”
MarketWatch
October 16, 2020
Panel 2 – Tackling Racial Inequity and Injustice in the Labor Market:
Amanda Cage, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Fund for Workforce Solutions @WorkforceAmanda
Sarah Keh, Vice President, Inclusive Solutions, Prudential Financial @sarah_keh
Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy, Economic Policy Institute @hshierholz
Tanya Wallace-Gobern, Executive Director, National Black Worker Center Project @NBWCP
Lisa Hamilton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Annie E. Casey Foundation (moderator) @lhamilton_aecf
WorkRise Network
October 16, 2020
Preventing or mitigating state and local government layoffs would be right in line with the Federal Reserve’s newfound interest in addressing structural racism in the economy. Such layoffs have in the past and would again disproportionately harm Black workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Next City
October 16, 2020