The real-world consequences of not passing new stimulus at this point in the crisis are ‘huge.’” – Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor under the Obama administration.
Shierholz, who currently works as a senior economist and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, also warned, “It’s literally millions of jobs in the balance here” and that because of the gap between the millions of unemployed and the limited available jobs, “no matter what they do, no matter how amazing they are, no matter how great their skills are, they won’t get a job because the jobs just aren’t there.”
Forbes
October 13, 2020
“The longer you are out [of a job], the more damage it can do,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank and former chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration.
CNBC
October 13, 2020
There is the official unemployment rate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was 7.9% as of September. That equates to about 12.6 million people.
In normal times, that’s more or less the best measure of how many people are out of work, according to Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor. But these are not normal times.
Marketplace
October 13, 2020
As the Economic Policy Institute’s Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman noted this summer, Holder believes that any and all economic relief policies should be centered directly on improving economic outcomes for Black women, specifically. EPI explains:
“Black women are the core of the nation’s economy, holding the front-line jobs and running small businesses, and they are more often the single heads of households in their communities. If they are elevated through policy, including everything from paid sick leave to stimulus programs targeted directly toward them, the economy at-large will benefit.”
Business Insider
October 13, 2020
On this episode, you’ll hear from:
Seritta Norige, former Disney World employee
Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, Economic Policy Institute
Julie Schecter, Skimm’r
Tappan Vickery, director of voter engagement, Headcount
Salvatore Attardo, professor of linguistics, Texas A&M University
Skimm This podcast
October 13, 2020
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
A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that the U.S. has lost overall more than 91,000 manufacturing plants and 5 million manufacturing jobs since 1997. It is true that the U.S. gained about 500,000 manufacturing jobs from 2016 to 2019, largely due to increased domestic purchasing from tax cuts and increased federal spending.
NBC News
October 9, 2020
According to research by the Economic Policy Institute published in late August and taking into account jobs gained back after the worst of the shutdowns during the spring, the coronavirus pandemic has left more than six million Americans without job-sponsored health insurance. When you take into account dependents, that number rises to more than 12 million.
“Though we don’t yet know precisely how damaging the Covid-19 shock has been to health insurance access, the shock has laid bare the huge uncertainty that employer-linked health insurance introduces into U.S. families’ lives. Even in normal times millions of U.S. households must manage coverage transitions in a given month. During economic crises, these coverage changes increasingly include transitioning into uninsured status, which puts families’ health and financial security at risk,” wrote Josh Bivens, author of the report and director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
October 9, 2020