It’s unclear whether DOL can still set AEWRs for 2021 without the USDA farm labor survey. Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that it might simply choose to retain this year’s AEWRs for next year. This would avoid a potential significant pay cut, but it wouldn’t reflect any wage increases observed in 2020.
The Counter
October 13, 2020
Research co-authored by Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, shows that shift Nair described in employer behavior. In 2015, 41% of approved labor condition applications were for level one wages, while in fiscal year 2018, only 16% of approved labor condition applications were level one. “They basically all shifted to level two,” Costa told Bloomberg Law.
Costa contends the new increase in wage levels likely won’t result in fewer H-1B visa holders in the U.S.
For fiscal 2019 data, more than 300,000 employer applications for level three and level four H-1B wage earners were approved, far in excess of the number of visas actually issued, Costa said. So even if all employers seeking H-1B workers at a level one or level two wage stopped sponsoring those workers because their salaries would be too costly, there would still be many more applicants for H-1B jobs than the number of H-1B petitions approved last year, he said.
Bloomberg Law
October 13, 2020
Happily, the Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has just launched a project on Unequal Power. It is the indispensable frame of analysis for political and economic comprehension and action.
The project has commissioned two dozen reports from historians, economists, political scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars. The first paper, by Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan who was once law clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, explains just how conservative courts have taken us back to the pre–New Deal era in undermining worker rights legislated by Congress.
With worse to follow if far-right Republicans tighten their grip on the courts. You need to read this.
The American Prospect
October 13, 2020
Meanwhile, the country’s manufacturing capacity ― which determines how many manufacturing jobs the country can sustain ― continued to decline. The United States lost 1,800 factories in 2017 and 2018, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank that receives some funding from labor unions. (EPI’s hawkish stances on trade and support for manufacturing policy has given its work bipartisan appeal: Trump cited the organization in his March 2016 op-ed.)
Huffpost
October 13, 2020
“The expiration of enhanced unemployment insurance benefits pulled $667 billion in purchasing power out of the economy in August alone,” per the Economic Policy Institute.
Axios
October 13, 2020
You can see what the average annual cost of infant and child care is in your state and get a sense if you’re paying far more or less than the average.
U.S. News and World Report
October 13, 2020
Economists say other relief policies have proved more effective at boosting the economy. For instance, an extra $600 in weekly unemployment pay helped bolster households that had suffered job or income losses — until it expired in July. In May alone, the program boosted personal income by $842 billion, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
That money helped support local businesses, keeping the economy from collapsing under the impact of lockdowns. But Mr. Trump on Tuesday didn’t mention renewing the program as a standalone funding effort.
CBS Moneywatch
October 13, 2020
“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