“Last week was the 27th straight week total initial [unemployment] claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession” a decade ago, Economic Policy Institute senior analyst Heidi Shierholz said in tweets on joblessness. “We’ve hit a grim milestone. Most states provide 26 weeks of regular benefits. That means last week was the first week many workers had exhausted their regular state unemployment insurance.”
People's Weekly World
September 25, 2020
Join WorkRise for the first installment in a week-long series of online conversations exploring bold new ideas for transforming the labor market for low-wage workers.
Panel 2 – Tackling Racial Inequity and Injustice in the Labor Market:
Amanda Cage, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Fund for Workforce Solutions
Tanya Wallace-Gobern, Executive Director, National Black Worker Center Project
Heidi Shierholz, Senior Economist and Director of Policy, Economic Policy Institute
Lisa Hamilton, President and Chief Executive Officer, Annie E. Casey Foundation (moderator)
WorkRise Network
September 25, 2020
“There’s no silver lining if you can’t work from home,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Gould adds that women make up a large segment of government employees and could be at risk if there are widespread public-sector layoffs.
Society for Human Resource Management
September 25, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, there have now been 27 consecutive weeks where the total number of people filing for unemployment was higher than the worst part of the Great Recession.
MSN Money
September 25, 2020
The bill has been endorsed by: the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
“Misclassification is a widespread problem affecting a large swath of workers across the country. This legislation would make it more difficult for employers to misclassify their workers and requires all employers to play by the same set of rules,” said Heidi Shierholz, Director of Policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “Particularly as our economy recovers from the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, workers will need all of the protections they are entitled to such as minimum wage, overtime pay, safe workplaces, and paid sick time. This legislation helps ensure that workers who are entitled to those protections actually receive them.”
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
September 25, 2020
Jonesboro, Arkansas has the lowest median housing costs of any city in our top 10 and the 20th-lowest amount for this metric overall, with residents paying $9,000 annually on average. While incomes fall behind other cities (the 2018 median annual income was $45,057), the area has a high graduation rate for high schoolers (about 93%). Arkansas also has the third-lowest average childcare costs of any state and the District of Columbia. Data from the Economic Policy Institute shows that the average annual costs of infant care and care for a four-year-old in Arkansas total $6,890 ($574 every month) and $5,478 ($457 every month), respectively.
Smart Asset
September 25, 2020
The jobs crisis isn’t over. As economists have been saying for some time now, the job-loss numbers are better than they were at the beginning of the pandemic, but still far above levels seen in any economic crisis since the Great Depression. “It’s just an ongoing crisis in the labor market,” said economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
September 25, 2020
U.S. job losses from the coronavirus-related downturn were sharp, deep and especially hurt some low-wage sectors of the economy, notably the leisure and hospitality industry, said Elise Gould, a senior economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Dayton Daily News
September 25, 2020
According to “Unprecedented: The Trump NLRB’s attack on workers’ rights,” an Economic Policy Institute report authored by Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock and Lynn Rhinehart, the agency has enforced the top-10 wish list of the conservative, management-oriented Chambers of Commerce. Among the 10 are forced arbitration of disputes while disallowing class and collective claims, and improving “management rights” to allow unilateral changes and undermine collective bargaining.
Tampa Bay Times
September 25, 2020
In its latest analysis released last week, the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute calculates the “teacher pay penalty” in North Carolina at 25.3%, the seventh highest among the states. EPI’s statistical construct helps illuminate the daunting uphill climb facing North Carolina in attracting high-quality teachers for every public school classroom.
As EPI defines it, the “penalty” is the gap between teachers’ salaries and the wages of comparable college-educated professionals. EPI, which describes itself as a think tank that focuses “on the economic condition of low- and middle-income Americans,” has tracked the wage gap for more than a decade and a half.
EdNC
September 25, 2020