Households of color were still trying to regain ground from the last financial crisis before the coronavirus pandemic came along. Income for Black households didn’t surpass 2007 levels until 2019, according to new Census Bureau data on income and poverty.
“But that’s already old news,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy, during a presentation this week. “The impact of the pandemic and the recession has had a disproportionate impact on Black workers and their families,” Wilson explained.
Forbes
September 21, 2020
Patients across the world are now suffering from economic hardship. The World Bank predicts the global economy will shrink by 5.2% this year, and that the U.S. economy will contract by 6.1%. Moreover, up to 12 million Americans may have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute, adding to people’s financial stress.
The Cancer Letter
September 21, 2020
Biden wants the 12.4% Social Security tax to kick back in for incomes above $400,000. The move takes square aim at the country’s highest earners. For example, the average salary for a CEO at the 350 largest publicly-traded companies was $1.325 million (as part of a $21.28 million projected pay package), according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
MarketWatch
September 21, 2020
The disparity between teachers’ salaries and those of other industries remains high despite some slight improvement last year. In 2019, teachers made 19.2% less than their nonteaching peers who had similar experience and education, an improvement of 2.8% from the year before when teachers made 22% less, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
Education Dive
September 21, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reported that in 1998—the year of the project—about 30 percent of the workforce worked for under $8 an hour, so from the start the odds were stacked against her.
The American Prospect
September 21, 2020
An August 2020 update from the Economic Policy Institute showed that unemployment among Ohio’s African Americans was roughly twice the overall rate for the first half of this year. Disparities in educational opportunities play a role, along with the economic consequences of a “school-to-prison pipeline.”
Energy News Network
September 21, 2020
In other news, we look at how the West Coast wildfires are affecting farmworkers; a strike at the Tate London; Heidi Shierholz of Economic Policy Institute on a legal defeat for a regressive Labor Department rule; and a nonprofit unionization streak, with Kayla Blado and Katie Barrows of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union. With recommended reading on workplace safety in the midst of a pandemic, and why urban homesteaders are rebranding tenant farming.
Dissent Magazine
September 21, 2020
Elise Gould and Will Kimball, “‘Right-to-Work’ States Still Have Lower Wages” (Washington: Economic Policy Institute, 2015), available at https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/
Center for American Progress
September 21, 2020
Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute (where I used to work) estimates that, without the first round of stimulus payments and beefed up jobless insurance, over 13 million people would have fallen below the poverty line.
“Unfortunately, the $600 supplementary unemployment insurance payment expired in July,” he writes in a blog.
“Senate Republicans blocking its renewal have increased poverty and hardship for millions of families in the middle of a pandemic that has caused widespread job loss and health devastation.”
Forbes
September 21, 2020
During his time in office, Trump has taken credit for the historically low unemployment rate for Black Americans, which hit 6.8% in early 2018. However, unemployment among white workers at the time was just 3.7%. Valerie Wilson, the director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy, said that “even when we look at people with the same levels of education, we typically find that the Black unemployment rate is really close to, if not higher than, double the white unemployment rate.”
Marketplace
September 21, 2020