The total number of workers who are permanently jobless is now 3.4 million, according to the bureau’s latest data. Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), wrote in a blog post Friday that contrary to the White House’s rosy spin, the new BLS report shows “the pain is nowhere near over for millions of workers and their families across the country.”
Common Dreams
September 8, 2020
White people are more likely to be able to work from home, according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, essential workers are at high risk for contracting Covid-19, and while White people make up 60% of the population, they account for only 55% of essential workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
CNN
September 8, 2020
Nationally, analysis of federal data by the Economic Policy Institute shows that Black women saw a slightly smaller increase in unemployment in April compared with February, but the rate was higher — 16.9 percent compared with 15.8 percent — because it started out higher for Black women. Latinas saw a much higher jump in unemployment than white women, and have been slower to regain work.
The Middletown Press
September 8, 2020
The July trade deficit numbers come less than a month after a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that despite Trump’s repeated vows to “bring back” U.S. manufacturing jobs, the president’s first-term trade agenda and disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic have “wiped out much of the last decade’s job gains in U.S. manufacturing.”
“The Trump administration has taken credit for ‘reshoring’ manufacturing jobs, but the data show that isn’t true,” said Robert Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing research at EPI. “Nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared under Trump between 2016 and 2018.”
Common Dreams
September 8, 2020
Even conservatives such as Glenn Hubbard, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, have argued that state cash needs were becoming urgent. Arguments about “state profligacy,” Hubbard adds, are beside the point. At an Economic Policy Institute online seminar held last month, Hubbard observed that “if an overweight person comes to the ER with a heart attack, you treat the heart attack before you lecture him or her about weight.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
September 8, 2020
The unemployment rate for white Georgians grew 4% to 7.5% between the first and second quarters of 2020, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. Unemployment for Black Georgians grew by 6.5% to 11.8% during the same time frame. Hispanic unemployment in Georgia shot up 9.1% to 12.4%.
Georgia Recorder
September 8, 2020
If Congress decides to reinstate a federal unemployment benefit bonus — in any amount — it will likely take two to four weeks for payments to flow to states and then recipients, according to the Economic Policy Institute. So far, the proposal has been introduced only in the Senate. Democratic congressional leaders are currently negotiating with the GOP on the particulars of the plan.
CNET
September 8, 2020
The teacher shortage is estimated to be well beyond the 100,000 mark, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Annual pay for teachers has been falling since the mid-1990s, with the median teacher salary now at about $60,000, plus benefits. Overall, teacher’s weekly wages are 17 percent lower than the compensation for comparable workers, according to an analysis of 2015 data from EPI (compared to 1994, when they were just 1.8 percent lower). The issue drew protests in 2018 and 2019 that framed the problems as a result of cutbacks on public education that will ultimately be detrimental to students, too.
Teaching is also the profession that employs the most women in the United States: 4.2 million.
The 19th
September 8, 2020
“Those who have the least advantages, the least economic opportunities, are going to bear the largest burden of any kind of downturn, whether it be an economic downturn, or whether it be a public health crisis,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Wilson sees not only an economic divide, but a racial divide: “COVID-19 has magnified these racial disparities that we have known about for decades. Because of the persistence of many of these disparities, we can almost predict how any crisis is going to go.”
CBS Sunday Morning
September 8, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has warned that without more federal aid, currently deadlocked in Congress, 5.3m local government jobs could go by the end of 2021. Again, women and people of color will be overrepresented in those jobs losses.
The Guardian
September 8, 2020