Some advocates of reforming the H-1B program are also skeptical.
“If they really had prioritized this and cared about it, they would have done it months ago, if not years ago,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Reuters
September 22, 2020
According to an Economic Policy Institute analysis, from 1948 to 1979 productivity from labor grew 108.1% while compensation for those laborers grew 93.2%. It was a win-win for owners and labor alike. But starting in 1979 things changed dramatically. Companies were able to use physical capital and technology (robots) to replace labor and to fuel growth. Without the need for more humans, they also didn’t have to pay humans more as productivity grew. From 1979 to 2018 productivity grew 69.3% while compensation grew only 11.6%.
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
September 22, 2020
In the survey, conducted by the New York Fed every four months, people under 45 said the minimum salary they would accept for a new job had risen 10% between March and July, climbing to an average of $68,655—the highest since at least 2014, the report released Monday showed. By contrast, workers over 45 demanded a slightly lower so-called “reservation wage” averaging $60,168 in July compared to $61,261 in March.1
Although the increase may seem counterintuitive, it could reflect the reluctance of people who still have jobs to make a change in an uncertain labor market, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute think tank and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Barack Obama. Another possible factor is the increased risk of working during a pandemic, particularly for younger workers who have occupations that require heavy social contact.
“If you are out of work, your reservation wage probably doesn’t go down as far if the jobs are all of a sudden a ton more dangerous than they were before,” Shierholz said.
The Balance
September 22, 2020
Economists said those ongoing cuts could impede a broader recovery, even as the private sector adds jobs. “State and local governments are hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s coast to coast, it’s politically ecumenical. Every state and municipality is struggling and responding by slashing payrolls,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who spoke in late August at an Economic Policy Institute panel discussion. “There’s no more effective way to help the economy and to help these states and support these jobs than providing federal government aid to state and local governments.”
SHRM
September 21, 2020
Even during the economic recovery of recent years, minority groups were lagging behind, says [Valerie Wilson, director of the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy] Economic Policy Institute. “There were significant racial disparities in wages, significant racial disparities in unemployment, significant racial disparities in the kinds of jobs people held.”
Black, Latino and Native American workers were more likely to have jobs that were lost during the pandemic, Wilson says. A Harvard University analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Pulse Survey, released in July, found that 58% of Latino and 53% of Black households experienced loss in earnings early in the pandemic. Wilson’s own research has shown that Latino workers have been particularly affected by job losses during the pandemic.
Daily Kos
September 21, 2020
President Trump showing signs of compromise with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? If so, that’s a good thing. Another 860,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. It was “the 26th week in a row total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession,” pointed out Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.
Newsweek
September 21, 2020
Domestic workers make $12.01 an hour on average and are three times as likely to live below the poverty line compared with other hourly workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Most lack benefits like sick leave and health insurance and often work without even a formal employment contract.
CBS Moneywatch
September 21, 2020
A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute found that up to 12 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic. And almost half of the 16.9 million jobs in the U.S. hospitality sector were lost in March and April. As of September, more than a quarter of workers in that sector remain unemployed.
Chicago Sun Times
September 21, 2020
De no haber estado en marcha esos programas, los efectos del shock económico causado por la pandemia habría sido un incremento en la pobreza de 13.2 millones de personas para llegar a una cifra total de 42.5 millones, calculan los economistas del Economic Policy Institute.
El Diario
September 21, 2020
Lawrence Mishel, a labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute, noted that “10 years ago, teachers were being vilified — they were put on the cover of magazines as being lazy.” Now, as teachers serve on the front lines of the pandemic, “there is a better appreciation that teachers. They’re heroes. And they’re underpaid and overworked, and they face tremendous challenges and none more than during the pandemic.”
Yahoo Finance
September 21, 2020