Meanwhile, here in early July, the coronavirus pandemic is still setting national caseload records, and weekly unemployment claim totals have over the last 15 consecutive weeks run more than twice as high, the Economic Policy Institute reports, as the worst jobless claim week of the Great Recession.
Counter Punch
July 9, 2020
Best personal finance tip in this recession? Say “Good bye, Amazon” and “Hello, Vanguard.”
Bloomberg
July 9, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has estimated 5.3 million lost jobs by the end of 2021 if the federal government does nothing. The jobs gap would be 2.6 million if $500 billion of federal aid passed—that $1 trillion in the House HEROES bill is necessary to avert significant job losses.
Daily Kos
July 9, 2020
Absent federal action, these job losses could get much worse. A recent analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that without it, North Carolina will lose a combined total of 156,500 public and private jobs by the end of 2021.
The Progressive Pulse
July 9, 2020
“We absolutely need to provide another round of relief and recovery measures for families,” Josh Bivens, director of research at the nonpartisan think tank Economic Policy Institute, told CNET. “We’re going to have steeply elevated rates of joblessness for a long time and there will be a lot of suffering unless we do more measures.”
CNET
July 9, 2020
Low-paid staff and graduate students stand to suffer significant harm to their health and household finances if UGA does not require face masks while indoors and will not allow instructors and staff to work from home if they are able and wish to do so. Nearly 3,000 graduate student workers at UGA make less than $25,000 per year. Additionally, an estimated 2,500 full-time employees (about 22% of UGA employees) earn salaries under $35,000, which the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator considers a living wage for a single adult with no children in Clarke County. With no extra money to spare, these workers are more likely to have health insurance plans with poorer coverage and higher deductibles. They simply cannot afford to get sick. By requiring staff and graduate students to work on campus with poor public health regulations, UGA is putting the health and limited resources of their most financially insecure employees and students at significant and unnecessary risk.
Flagpole
July 9, 2020
On the other side of the debate was a group called Save Our Tips, which purported to represent the city’s servers and bartenders opposed to getting rid of the tipped wage, but was largely funded by the National Restaurant Association. Save Our Tips warned that ensuring a full minimum wage for servers and bartenders would mean losing tips. But that’s not what has appeared to happen in states that don’t have a tipped wage. There, servers and bartenders earn 17 percent more per hour than those in all the other states, including not just base pay but also tips, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank.
Fair Warning
July 9, 2020
“If Biden is president he will be up against this just incredibly, incredibly weak economy,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, and a chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department in the Obama administration. “Regardless of what’s going on with Covid, whether there’s a vaccine or widespread mask-wearing or not, it will be a hugely depressed economy.”
Bloomberg
July 9, 2020
This study by the Economic Policy Institute presents data on union membership, some of which I’ve posted below. The first chart reveals the revolution in public‐sector unionism during the 1960s and 70s. The second chart reflects the large differences in union policies between the states.
CATO Institute
July 9, 2020
While activists and government officials have advocated for the removal of these monuments as symbols of racial oppression, there’s also a financial cost to Confederate symbols. And it comes right out of Black workers’ paychecks, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“Areas that actually chose to honor [Confederate generals] are racist,” EPI economist Jhacova Williams told Yahoo Finance. “Blacks are less likely to be employed in these areas. They’re more likely to be employed in low-status occupations, and they have lower wages compared to their white counterparts.”
Yahoo Finance
July 9, 2020