“Economists use seasonal adjustments to smooth out seasonal patterns to get a better read of the underlying trends in the labor market,” said Heidi Shierholz, who was chief economist at the Labor Department during the Obama administration.
“Every year in January, 100,000 extra people apply for unemployment insurance claims, because they lost temporary holiday jobs,” Shierholz said. “You wouldn’t want economists to say, ‘Ah, things in the economy are really deteriorating’ when they’re not, it was just a normal seasonal pattern.”
Marketplace
September 8, 2020
In the future, Shierholz said she hopes the federal government takes more responsibility for administering unemployment benefits in times of crisis. The patchwork of statewide rules and standards creates an inequality problem: not including the $600 bonus from the stimulus package, unemployed workers in Massachusetts can get access to as much as $1,220 per week for 26 weeks, while Georgians can get just $365 per week for 12 weeks.
Business Insider
September 8, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute senior economist and former chief economist at the Department of Labor, joins Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers to break down a new EPI report on the outlook for unions amid COVID-19.
Yahoo Finance
September 8, 2020
This graph comes from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) — it shows the relationship between union density and the percentage of national income going to the richest 10 percent of Americans. As you can see, the larger the share of the American workforce that’s unionized, the lower the share of national income goes to the super-rich — and vice versa.
I’ve also combined the union density graph with another from EPI showing the break between worker productivity gains and worker compensation gains. Look at the story it tells about what happened between 1948 and 2017.
Jacobin
September 8, 2020
First and foremost, this pandemic emphasizes the need to give workers at the bottom end of the income ladder some economic security, like by increasing the minimum wage to at least $15. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a $15 minimum wage by 2024 would generate $120 billion in higher wages for workers and would also benefit their communities. Lower-paid workers often spend most of their extra income; the increased minimum wage will initially stimulate the economy and spur greater business activity and job growth.
Faribault Daily News
September 8, 2020
Notably, however, lower unemployment rates for Asian Americans before the pandemic largely stem from a higher level of education, the Economic Policy Institute has found. Adjust for that and Asian Americans actually had higher, not lower, rates of unemployment than White workers.
“The Asian population in America has lots of high-end workers, but also lots of low-end workers as well,” said Kim, who authored the EPI study. Because higher-income employees tend to have more education, when they lose their jobs it often longer for them to find new employment, Kim explained. “Higher education workers end up being counted as unemployed longer instead of giving up.”
CBS News Moneywatch
September 8, 2020
There are 11 million more unemployed workers than job openings nationwide, according to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
KTVU-TV
September 8, 2020
Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick & Taylor Riggs bring you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before the closing bell on Wall Street as stocks sink despite strong jobs data. Guests Today: Megan Greene of the Harvard Kennedy School, Jeff Tannenbaum of Titan Grove, Michael Crow of Arizona State University, Anne Mathias of Vanguard, Tim Perez of the DNC, Nancy Tengler of Laffer Tangler Investments, Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute
Bloomberg TV
September 8, 2020
Between February and May, nearly 11 million jobs held by women have disappeared – eliminating a decade of job gains by women. By June, women regained 2.9 million position, but mostly in the hospitality field, which remains insecure amid the pandemic, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Chicago Tribune
September 8, 2020
How many Americans have lost employer-sponsored insurance is yet to be determined because federal data won’t be available until 2021. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 6.2 million workers have lost access to health insurance that they previously got through their employers and, as a result, 4 million more Americans have joined their state Medicaid rolls.
Bloomberg Law
September 8, 2020