According to the Economic Policy Institute, upward of six million workers have lost employer-provided health insurance since the pandemic began. Since most workers have families, the total number of people who’ve lost coverage likely exceeds double that, or more than 12 million.
The American Prospect
September 15, 2020
It’s no secret that wage and productivity growth began decoupling in the 1970s. Charts like this one from the Economic Policy Institute have been ubiquitous in progressive economic policy debates since the Great Recession:
New York Magazine
September 15, 2020
“As jobs are coming back they’re disproportionately going to white people,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute.
Huffington Post
September 15, 2020
Stop pretending Black midwesterners don’t exist and it’s not just the white working class that is suffering, it is the working class, period. We can’t solve the problem if we refuse to see who those workers actually are. By 2032, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the American working class will be made up mostly of people of color, including Black workers.
MSNBC AM Joy
September 14, 2020
Here’s Heidi Shierholz at the liberal Economic Policy Institute demolishing the Republicans’ assertion:
Rigorous empirical studies show that any theoretical work disincentive effect of the $600 was so minor that it cannot even be detected. For example, a study by Yale economists found no evidence that recipients of more generous benefits were less likely to return to work, which is what we would expect to see if the extra payments really were a disincentive to work. And a case in point: in May/June/July—with the $600 in place—9.2 million people went back to work, and a large share of likely UI recipients who returned to work were making more on UI than their prior wage. The extra benefits did not stop them from going back. A job offer is too important at a time like this to be traded for a temporary increase in benefits, and when commentators ignore that, they are ignoring the realities of the lives of working people. Further, there are 8.5 million more unemployed workers than job openings, meaning millions will remain jobless no matter what they do. Dropping the $600 cannot incentivize people to get jobs that are not there. […]
Dropping the $600 is also exacerbating racial inequality. Due to the impact of historic and current systemic racism, Black and brown communities have seen more job loss in this recession, and have less wealth to fall back on. They are taking a much bigger hit with the expiration of the $600.
Daily Kos
September 14, 2020
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last month, the Black unemployment rate was 13 percent, nearly twice the white unemployment rate of 7.3 percent. The racial wage gap is 26.5 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The Sentencing Project notes that the Black incarceration rate is five times the white incarceration rate. Therefore, we can safely assume these economic and social disparities are not due to race but because Black people are lazy, uneducated criminals who don’t want to work.
The Root
September 14, 2020
Economic inequality plagues Black families. A June 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute determined the average hourly wage of a working Black male in America in 2019 was a little more than $20, or 71% of the average wage of a working white male, at $29. The salary of Black women was even lower: the average wage of a working Black female, about $18, was 83% of the average wage of a working white female, who made an average $22.
Cronkite News
September 14, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute disputes the rose-tinted hue that Trump and the White House are giving the unemployment figures.
It noted that the 13.6 million people officially unemployed in August, did not take into account an extra 1.1 million workers who were temporarily unemployed but misclassified as “employed but not at work.”
In addition, there were 4.3 million people out of work because of the virus but who were not counted because they were not actively seeking a job.
This, the EPI says, puts the number of people either officially unemployed or out of work because of COVID-19 closer to 19 million, meaning an unemployment rate of 11.3 percent.
Bearing the brunt of the job losses were women, Latino workers, and low wage sectors of the economy, notably leisure and hospitality.
“Another group that hasn’t got a lot of attention are younger workers,” EPI senior economist Elise Gould told Newsweek.
Newsweek
September 14, 2020
These different paths follow the direction of the two spokes that poke out from the vertical line on the “K.” But the diverging spokes can also be interpreted in other ways that tell a similar story. Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says the two prongs can also represent: people with high and low wage levels, those that have the ability to work from home and those who don’t, and those who have liquid wealth assets to survive during the recession and those who don’t. “It’s very much a split of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots,’” she says.
Fast Company
September 14, 2020