Even conservatives such as Glenn Hubbard, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, have argued that state cash needs were becoming urgent. Arguments about “state profligacy,” Hubbard adds, are beside the point. At an Economic Policy Institute online seminar held last month, Hubbard observed that “if an overweight person comes to the ER with a heart attack, you treat the heart attack before you lecture him or her about weight.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
September 8, 2020
The unemployment rate for white Georgians grew 4% to 7.5% between the first and second quarters of 2020, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. Unemployment for Black Georgians grew by 6.5% to 11.8% during the same time frame. Hispanic unemployment in Georgia shot up 9.1% to 12.4%.
Georgia Recorder
September 8, 2020
If Congress decides to reinstate a federal unemployment benefit bonus — in any amount — it will likely take two to four weeks for payments to flow to states and then recipients, according to the Economic Policy Institute. So far, the proposal has been introduced only in the Senate. Democratic congressional leaders are currently negotiating with the GOP on the particulars of the plan.
CNET
September 8, 2020
The teacher shortage is estimated to be well beyond the 100,000 mark, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Annual pay for teachers has been falling since the mid-1990s, with the median teacher salary now at about $60,000, plus benefits. Overall, teacher’s weekly wages are 17 percent lower than the compensation for comparable workers, according to an analysis of 2015 data from EPI (compared to 1994, when they were just 1.8 percent lower). The issue drew protests in 2018 and 2019 that framed the problems as a result of cutbacks on public education that will ultimately be detrimental to students, too.
Teaching is also the profession that employs the most women in the United States: 4.2 million.
The 19th
September 8, 2020
“Those who have the least advantages, the least economic opportunities, are going to bear the largest burden of any kind of downturn, whether it be an economic downturn, or whether it be a public health crisis,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Wilson sees not only an economic divide, but a racial divide: “COVID-19 has magnified these racial disparities that we have known about for decades. Because of the persistence of many of these disparities, we can almost predict how any crisis is going to go.”
CBS Sunday Morning
September 8, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has warned that without more federal aid, currently deadlocked in Congress, 5.3m local government jobs could go by the end of 2021. Again, women and people of color will be overrepresented in those jobs losses.
The Guardian
September 8, 2020
There was a recent Economic Policy Institute report that said Black workers make up about 1 in 6 front-line industry workers, so of course that takes time away from the learning environment and what they are able to offer their children.
The Undefeated
September 8, 2020
Unfortunately, many of the workers businesses as well as federal, state or local governments label essential don’t always get treated like it.
“Despite being categorized as essential, many workers in these industries are not receiving the most basic health and safety measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus,” the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on issues involving low- and middle-income workers, said in a May blog post. “Essential workers are dying as a result.”
The Houma Courier
September 8, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute recently pointed out that 12 million Americans have lost their employer-provided health care insurance during the pandemic.
Newsweek
September 8, 2020
The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and December 2014 because of “growing trade deficits in manufacturing products prior to the Great Recession and then the massive output collapse during the Great Recession,” according to a 2015 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Fox Business
September 8, 2020