“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
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
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
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
And those costs continue to rise. Daycare and preschool expenses grew almost twice as fast as overall inflation between 2000 and 2019, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics analyzed by Elise Gould, a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute. Daycare and preschool inflation grew 94% while overall inflation grew 48% from 2000 to 2019, Gould found.
CNBC
July 23, 2020
And without any aid, New Jersey could lose 152,500 public and private-sector jobs by the end of next year, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group.
NJ.com
July 23, 2020
According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute, their inaction has resulted in the loss of more than 350,000 jobs in Texas alone. This means an additional 5 million workers will be seeking unemployment benefits but will instead find themselves empty handed.
NBC 5
July 23, 2020
In a letter to be sent Wednesday afternoon, the leaders of progressive advocacy groups such as the Center for American Progress, MoveOn, the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute, as well as the Service Employees International Union, said cutting the benefits would lead to “economic calamity.”
The Hill
July 23, 2020
“Covid has poured salt in those wounds,” Elise Gould, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said. “It’s not just out of reach, it’s unavailable.”
Politico
July 23, 2020