“When the economy’s growth is demand-constrained, anything that keeps households from cutting back on spending actually supports growth,” Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said in June. “Cutting off a policy support that helps households maintain spending is a terrible idea, both for these households’ welfare and for macroeconomic stabilization.”
MarketWatch
August 31, 2020
An estimated 12 million people in this country have lost their health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on research from the Economic Policy Institute. The group looked at net employment levels between February and August 2020, and job churn levels to estimate losses of health insurance coverage.
Scripps National News
August 31, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 2007 and 2011, the decrease in Black public sector employment was more than 30% greater than the decrease in white public sector employment. More than 177,000 Black workers lost their state or local government job during the Great Recession.
New York Post
August 31, 2020
At the start of this year, nearly 20 million Americans worked for state and local governments. In recent months, more than a million state and local workers have lost their jobs. Those layoffs lead to other layoffs, as families tighten their belts and cut basic consumer spending. Absent needed federal aid for states and localities, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the economy would lose an additional 5.3 million jobs by the end of next year. As Lightfoot described Chicago’s plight: “If we don’t get help from the government, we have nothing but bad choices.”
MarketWatch
August 31, 2020
Dresser contributed to a 2019 report led by the Economic Policy Institute that said all 12 Midwestern states have deep racial disparities, in areas from education and jobs, to health and home ownership. In these states, Dresser said Black elected leaders have tried calling attention to these issues, but their voices often are drowned out amid decades of growing political divisions;
SeehaferNews
August 31, 2020
Recent studies (Yale, Economic Policy Institute) show that receiving these benefits doesn’t prevent people from returning to work. The problem: There are 14 million more job seekers than there are jobs.
Sun Sentinel
August 31, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute found that Black workers faced high rates of job loss. Workers of color are overrepresented in industries hit hardest by pandemic-related layoffs, including domestic workers and restaurant employees, and Black and Latino workers are less likely to have the ability to work from home.
NJ.com
August 31, 2020
But Heidi Sheirholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute, is worried that the recent wave of layoffs at big companies signals something more permanent.
“We’re still in a terrible hole,’’ Shierholz said. “The fact that jobs growth is slowing is devastating.’’
The Associated Press
August 31, 2020
Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts were the party’s landmark policy around this issue. Trump promised the cuts would lead companies to give “billions and billions of dollars away to their workers” — but they didn’t. One study from the left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute, a year after the tax bill was passed, found the tax bill’s bonuses only resulted in an average 1 cent hourly raise for workers. In the years that followed, companies have mostly spent their windfall buying back shares, boosting stock prices for executives and wealthy shareholders.
Yahoo Finance
August 31, 2020
In a blog post Thursday after the U.S. Labor Department reported that 1.4 million more Americans filed unemployment claims last week, Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute wrote that Trump’s unemployment directive “is doing more harm than good” and urged Congress to urgently revive the $600-per-week supplement.
Raw Story
August 31, 2020