The racial wealth gap is an issue that has persisted from generation to generation in the U.S. The Economic Policy Institute stated in 2017 that average wealth for white families was seven times higher than average wealth for Black families. The median wealth, or wealth in the family in the exact middle of the overall distribution, of white families was 12 times higher than that of Black families.
Forbes
September 9, 2020
Let’s see … we’re almost entering month seven of the pandemic. So it makes sense that many furloughs are now becoming layoffs. But Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, said we’re at a new turning point. Job losses are spreading from industries decimated by lockdowns — like hospitality and tourism — and into others that weren’t initially as sensitive.
“Businesses that maybe thought they were going to be fine, unaffected by any social distancing measures are looking up and saying ‘Yeah, we didn’t have a problem then, but now we’re just seeing demand for goods and services has just been depressed,’” Shierholz said.
She said at this point in the pandemic, minimizing job loss is about boosting spending — something that became more difficult for families once that extra $600-a-week in unemployment benefits went away.
Marketplace
September 9, 2020
Less government spending in turn feeds a negative economic spiral, driven by lost government worker incomes and reduced purchases of private goods and services. So lower government spending adds up to large direct and indirect job losses. In June, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that “without aid to state and local governments, 5.3 million workers will likely lose their jobs by the end of 2021.”
Forbes
September 9, 2020
But childcare providers perform this crucial service for pennies on the dollar. The average daycare operator grosses just $48,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas the standard daycare worker makes just $24,000. Usually these jobs come with little or no paid time off, and no employee-sponsored healthcare. Only 15% of childcare workers receive health insurance sponsored by their employer versus 50% of workers from other occupations, according to a 2015 Economic Policy Institute report. The lack of healthcare benefits is problematic in normal times, as children unwittingly bring their stomach bug or pink eye to their daycares. But during a pandemic, it’s potentially lethal. Daycare providers who make an average of just $11.65 an hour may be unable to risk seeking treatment for any disease, much less COVID-19.
Time
September 9, 2020
A reality you may be somewhat more aware of is that unions benefit their members and other workers covered by union contracts. Which they do—to the tune of an 11.2% wage boost for a worker under a union contract as compared to an equivalent worker in a nonunion workplace. But it’s important to understand that unions help nonunion workers, too. “Research shows that deunionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality between typical (median) workers and workers at the high end of the wage distribution in recent decades—on the order of 13–20% for women and 33–37% for men,” the Economic Policy Institute reports.
Daily Kos
September 8, 2020
As the nation celebrates workers this labor day weekend, a new study shows Union membership often pays off and higher wages. A new study from the left-leaning economic policy Institute finds unionized workers typically earn 11% more than their nonunion counterparts and enjoy better benefits as well. Heidi Shierholz one of the authors of the study says the union premium is even bigger for Black and Brown workers.
NPR
September 8, 2020
Economic Policy Institute yesterday. diane swonk quoted it the moment it came out. you’ve got to take the claims yesterday and throw on top of it depended it kind of claims that are out there, and then you’ve got the furlough to permanently off dynamic as well.
Bloomberg TV
September 8, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist with the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, says these figures are weaker than they appear. “1.4 million jobs we would think that would be an enormous jump but it actually represents a slowdown from what we’ve seen from the prior couple of months and it’s important to note that the economy is still down 11.5 million jobs where it was in February before the pandemic.”
NPR
September 8, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, just 67% of nonunion private-sector workers had access to health care benefits in 2019, compared to 94% of union members. The union difference is real.
Tennessee Lookout
September 8, 2020
The evidence that automation has been displacing human labor is fairly thin. A 2017 NBER paper by Acemoglu and Restrepo found that industries and areas that added more robots saw lower employment and lower wages. But a careful analysis by economists Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute found that the story wasn’t so clear. Acemoglu and Restrepo focused only on one very narrow form of automation — industrial robots. Mishel and Bivens, looking at the same data, found that overall investment in information technology was positively correlated with employment.
Bloomberg
September 8, 2020