Fast Company
July 23, 2020
It’s not easy to find a job these days, even if your state isn’t experiencing a surge of Covid-19 cases that’s prompting new shutdowns. The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings as of mid-June is about 3.6 people for every available position, according to progressive Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
July 23, 2020
“I think it can be seen as an infrastructure investment,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which estimates Biden’s plan could allow 3 million people who have been sidelined by the costs of child and elder care to return to the workforce. “It’s shovel ready.”
Bloomberg
July 23, 2020
A recent report from the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that most of these employers are “taking advantage of a flawed H-1B (visa) prevailing wage rule to underpay their workers relative to market wage standards, resulting in major savings in labor costs for companies that use the H-1B.”
Immigration Reform
July 23, 2020
“If unemployment insurance benefits are really keeping people out of the labor market, employers will have to raise wages in order to attract workers,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
The New York Times
July 23, 2020
With unemployment rates double that of white workers under more normal circumstances, Black workers weren’t on a level playing field to start with. Now the pandemic has only exacerbated that difference, in part because Black workers are less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute. That plays out in this chart’s trendlines, too. The white unemployment rate went from 3% in January to 9% in June; the Black unemployment rate went from 7% to 15% during the same period.
Fast Company
July 23, 2020
In 2013, the Economic Policy Institute’s then-president Larry Mishel co-authored a report with John Schmitt and Heidi Shierholz challenging the theory that technology was driving increased wage inequality. And in 2017, Mishel and Josh Bivens wrote a report whose title blended two movie tropes: “The Zombie Robot Argument Lurches On: There Is No Evidence That Automation Leads to Joblessness or Inequality.”
“I’m all for training workers,” Mishel told The American Prospect, “but ‘let them eat training’ is a remarkable response to the current crisis. There is no evidence it will reduce unemployment.”
The American Prospect
July 23, 2020
In May, total unemployment compensation benefits nationally were a stunning 14.6% of total wage and salary income. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that ending the supplement would cost Ohio nearly 130,000 jobs over the next year.
Cincinnati
July 23, 2020
As Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute points out, “Cutting off the $600 cannot incentivize people to get jobs that aren’t there.”
People’s World
July 23, 2020
The additional money allowed a substantial portion of Americans to have either no pay cut at all or a small one, helping to support the economic recovery through improved consumer spending, according to Josh Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“The extra unemployment benefits were exactly what the economy needed, and it provided a huge support by preventing the public-health driven recession from turning into a much broader financial problem,” Bivens says. “But now we’re threatening to strip that away. People won’t have money to spend to help restart the economy, which is a huge threat to growth in the coming months.”
USA Today
July 23, 2020