“Because most U.S. workers rely on their employer or a family member’s employer for health insurance, the shock of the coronavirus has cost millions of Americans their jobs and their access to health care in the midst of a public health catastrophe,” according to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
CBS This Morning
October 13, 2020
Don’t just take my word for it, though. The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on (duh) economic policy, recently released a report outlining 50 ways that the Trump administration has been bad for workers. It’s a grim survey of the dozens of dirty tricks that Trump has pulled on organized labor, marginalized workers, and the U.S. working class in general in favor of corporate vampires and right-wing ghouls, all while insisting that he’s actually “fighting” for his own idealized version of the American worker.
Teen Vogue
October 13, 2020
“Under Trump, U.S. jobs are moving overseas even faster than before,” business website Quartz wrote in 2017. Two years later, the Guardian noted that since Trump became president, “nearly 200,000 jobs have moved overseas.” And just a few months ago, the Economic Policy Institute reported that between 2016 and 2018 — the most recent year for which data is available — “nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared” from the U.S. manufacturing base.
Bloomberg Quint
October 13, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute released a report in June that found Black and Latino low- and middle-income essential workers, like sanitation workers, have been disproportionately excluded from receiving extra compensation during the pandemic – even though they have greater concern and likelihood of contracting the virus. According to report author Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the institute, this disparity is a symptom of institutional racism as well the lack of power among many workers of color.
“It reflects their lack of bargaining power versus their employers, and reflects persistent discrimination,” said Mishel.
The report also speculated that as cities struggle with high unemployment rates and economic turmoil, meeting the demands for hazard pay will only get more challenging.
“I don’t think workers are compensated for risks even in the best of times,” added Mishel. “Now, with high unemployment, it is even harder to get.”
Waste Dive
October 13, 2020
As University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos put it in an excellent monograph for the Economic Policy Institute, the justices operated from a narrow, legalistic concept of freedom and equality: “The idea, which judges often made explicit, was that absent labor legislation employers and workers were each equally free to enter into, or refuse to enter into, contracts with each other. That is, the courts presumed that employers and employees had equal power in the labor market. “
Common Dreams
October 13, 2020
A May 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) finds that 60 percent of H-1B positions certified by the DOL are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation.
The Hill
October 13, 2020
Career economists at OIRA appear to have been reluctant to sign off on DOL’s sunny forecast for workers’ wages, particularly because of murky available data.
“That removal following OIRA’s review is no surprise, given that a positive wage effect of the proposed rule can’t be supported,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former DOL chief economist during the Obama administration. “If anything, the available evidence goes in the opposite direction, with independent contractors earning less than similar employees.”
Shierholz’s current employer, the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, is among the outside groups that plan to fill in the data gap by submitting their own economic projections. Public comments are due in two weeks.
Bloomberg Law
October 13, 2020
But others say that with an estimated 33 million workers being harmed by the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, “It is terrible economics to pause stimulus talks.” That’s according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
She wrote that “the extra $600 in weekly UI benefits was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who, without it, have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting millions of jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs.”
MarketWatch
October 13, 2020
Almost 30 million Americans lacked health insurance at some point in 2019, an increase of 1 million people from 2018, according to recent Census data. The number of uninsured people increased in 19 states last year.
Additionally, as many as 6 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored insurance as the pandemic shuttered businesses and swelled the jobless ranks, the Economic Policy Institute estimated in August.
Bloomberg Government
October 13, 2020
Turmoil among independent restaurants is cascading down to a swath of suppliers, including many seafood companies and small farmers that mainly serve diners rather than supermarket customers. Every 100 restaurant jobs support 50 more at suppliers such as wholesalers and farmers, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Wall Street Journal
October 13, 2020