Heidi Shierholz, who served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonpartisan labor think tank the Economic Policy Institute, joins us to talk about the BLS, the important data it compiles, and what the hell a revision is.
Crooked Media What A Day Podcast
August 13, 2025
Economists have warned that the sharp drop in immigrants coming into the U.S., and Trump’s aggressive deportation policies, could have detrimental effects on the country’s economy.
The Economic Policy Institute wrote in July that Trump’s deportation efforts will reduce jobs for immigrants and U.S.-born workers alike, as deportations will “[threaten] the ability of employers to generate revenue and pay for business expenses like rent, machinery, and even the labor of any remaining workers.”
Time Magazine
August 13, 2025
The ITIN has also been used as a way for immigrants to show they are abiding by the law as they wait for Congress to pass an immigration reform bill, said Daniel Costa, the director of Immigration Law and Policy and the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think this is because the immigration reform bills that have been proposed in Congress and included a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants have often included provisions requiring undocumented immigrants to pay back taxes. If they have kept up with paying their taxes and a legalization passes Congress, then they’ll already have met that requirement,” he said. He added, however, that Congress hasn’t taken a meaningful step in that direction since 2013.
Houston Chronicle
August 13, 2025
“Today’s jobs report is what entering a recession looks like,” wrote Josh Bivens, chief economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, on Friday. “Could we pull up? Sure. But if we look back and end up dating an official recession that starts 3-6 months from now, this is what it would look like today — rapid softening/deterioration in the labor market.”
LA Times
August 13, 2025
We’re joined today by VALERIE WILSON — labor economist at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, where she heads up the organization’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy — to discuss just some of those reasons.
“I think this particular firing has raised alarm bells with so many people because of how important, how essential, those monthly jobs numbers are in this country,” Wilson explains today. “There’s a lot of visibility around these numbers and statistics. And we know that a lot of decision-makers rely on those numbers: the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, policymakers, businesses.” Moreover, she tells me, “the fact that this seems to be a politicized firing because the President simply didn’t like what the report was saying, is especially troubling to people who rely on the accuracy of those numbers to make important decisions.”
Pacifica Radio
August 13, 2025
“We’ve definitely seen school districts across the country make the decision to change bus routes, cut bus routes,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied the nationwide shortage of school bus drivers.
More than half of all students, he says, still rely on buses to get to school, especially low-income students.
Today, EPI found there are nearly a third fewer bus drivers than there were 15 years ago.
“I think perhaps they are undervalued because we don’t think about what an essential service it is to get children safely and on time to school,” said Martinez Hickey. “When there are changes to school bus routes or there are cancellations, that can contribute to increases in chronic absenteeism for students.”
CBS News Texas
August 13, 2025
“The president’s belief that the BLS commissioner personally ‘produced’ the jobs numbers is preposterous and shows a complete misunderstanding of how government statistical agencies operate,” noted Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Department of Labor, in a post about McEntarfer’s firing.
She added, “These data are the product of careful work by hundreds of expert economists, statisticians and civil servants following transparent, well-established methodologies.”
CBS Moneywatch
August 13, 2025
“To me, today’s jobs report is what entering a recession looks like,” Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, wrote after the Friday report.
CNBC
August 13, 2025
Black women in particular have seen a dramatic increase in unemployment over the past year, from 5.5% to 6.3%. Certain states are also seeing exceptionally high unemployment rates for Black people, with some, including Michigan, hovering near 10%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
USA Today
August 13, 2025