Media clips
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Whitmer cited a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank devoted to ensuring fair pay, health care, and retirement security, that said payroll fraud cost workers $429 million in wages and overtime between 2013 and 2015. And an MSU study that said employee misclassification costs Michigan $107 million a year in evaded taxes.
Detroit Free Press April 16, 2021 -
Producers have urged Biden to keep the steel tariff, and they found a new point of argument in a recent study. Left-leaning think tank the Economic Policy Institute found in a March 24 analysis that the steel tariffs delivered benefits in the near term, including drastic cuts to steel imports. The study was promoted after its release by the American Iron and Steel Institute, a nonprofit that represents U.S. steelmakers and iron producers.
The Section 232 actions had “no meaningful real-world impact” on the prices of steel-consuming products such as cars, and exclusions to the actions such as those instituted under Trump “mitigate positive economic impact,” according to the study. After the measures were implemented in 2018 and prior to the widespread downturn in 2020, steel producers in the U.S. outlined plans to invest more than $15.76 billion in new or upgraded steel facilities and to create more than 3,200 new jobs in the country.
There is “no doubt” the trade actions boosted profitability in the U.S. steel sector, increased long-term investment within the space and led to some form of a recovery, according to Robert Scott, an economist who worked on the study. However, the tariffs alone were unable to stop the issue of excess steel production abroad.
“Until we get that problem under control, I don’t think the need for the tariffs is going to go away,” Scott said in an interview. “Other countries aren’t going to be willing to make concessions without really tough international bargaining.”
S&P Global April 16, 2021 -
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
VOX April 15, 2021 -
Declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker, according to an estimate by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Celine McNicholas, EPI’s director of government affairs and labor counsel, said that tying federal contract dollars to union jobs wouldn’t be sufficient for creating a workforce with strong union density.
“It will make a difference, but you absolutely need meaningful labor-law reform, not nibbling around the edges and offering piecemeal” measures, she said. “The system is fundamentally broken and requires fundamental reform.”
Bloomberg April 15, 2021 -
The depth and speed of the current economic downturn was unprecedented, but the longstanding gaps in wealth and wages indicate that Black and brown households will take longer to bounce back, according to Kyle Moore, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race and ethnicity.
“In periods of general economic growth, racial disparities in a wide range of poverty indicators have remained constant, suggesting a lack of political will over decades to tackle the root causes. Black and brown households have been hardest hit in every economic crisis, and taken the longest to recover,” said Moore.
The Guardian April 15, 2021 -
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, noted that the National Labor Relations Act requires employers to bargain in good faith. But she said only “really egregious conduct” violates that rule.
“That’s why you so often see companies dragging their feet at the bargaining table,” she said. “They don’t really face any penalties. And there are no tight time structures within the law as it exists now, so workers can end up bargaining for years.”
But legislation proposed in Congress known as the PRO Act would expand worker rights, McNicholas said, in part by requiring employers to negotiate first contracts in a timely manner.
The U.S. House passed the PRO Act last month, but its chances in the closely divided Senate are less certain.
Under the measure, companies would, for the first time, face financial penalties for violating federal labor law. They could also be considered “joint employers” even when they contract out work to another firm. Google, therefore, could be forced to come to the negotiating table rather than leave matters entirely in the hands of a contractor.
McNicholas couldn’t say what the PRO Act would mean specifically for the HCL employees in Pittsburgh, but she said it would give more leverage to workers overall.
“If you have any kind of influence over the way in which this workforce operates, you’re going to be compelled to bargain with them, so that workers are not trying to chase down different employers in a complicated contracting system,” she said.
90.5 WESA April 14, 2021 -
Strong national employment numbers from March are a reason for optimism, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. But the country is still down 8.4 million jobs or as many as 11 million when considering what the job growth might have been without the pandemic, she said.
“Going into this, on average we were creating about 200,000 jobs a month,” Gould said. “We still have more than 4 million people that have been unemployed for at least six months.”
The Black unemployment rate, historically about twice the rate of whites, is 9.6%, compared to 6% for white workers, Gould said. The Hispanic unemployment rate soared to nearly 19% and was even higher for Hispanic women at 20.5%. It’s now close to 8%.
Denver Post April 14, 2021 -
A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released last week affirms that these Section 232 steel tariffs are effective. Following their implementation, U.S. steel producers made new investments, upgrades, plant expansions and reopened idled facilities in at least 15 states. American steel producers created thousands of jobs and plan to invest more than $15.7 billion in new and upgraded facilities.
Critics of the Section 232 on steel like to claim it increased prices for downstream products. But don’t buy it. The new EPI study data show prices were unaffected across the broad array of industries that account for the vast majority of steel consumption and that steel tariffs had no measurable impact on downstream steel-consuming industries or material effects on consumer prices.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 13, 2021 -
It’s an issue that’s been ongoing since the start of the pandemic. Last April, the Economic Policy Institute reported that for every 10 people who successfully filed a claim, an additional two people didn’t try because it was too difficult. In all, the report suggested, millions more people would have filed for benefits if the process were easier.
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Other potential claimants may be misclassified. There are many people who are classified as employed, but absent from work due to pandemic-related business closures, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Some workers who should be classified as ‘unemployed’ are mistakenly classified as ‘employed, but not at work’.
Worker misclassification contributed to approximately 636,000 missing workers who could have filed for unemployment benefits in March 2021, according to the EPI. “People were thinking they would get called back to work, but they’re actually unemployed,” says Gould.
TIME/Next Advisor April 13, 2021 -
“The way a recession can really hurt people just starting out can have lasting effects,” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, previously told Insider. “There’s a lot of evidence that the first postgrad job you get sets the stage in some important way for later.”
Business Insider April 13, 2021 -
If you wanted to find an original text for the Biden administration’s foreign policy, it would be an 83-page report by a Washington think tank released in the thick of the 2020 presidential race. In 2018, midway through Trump’s term, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace set out to reimagine U.S. foreign policy. The institution assembled about a dozen specialists in economics and international affairs who’d worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. Among them was Sullivan, a senior fellow. He made a point to talk with labor leaders. “The fact that he was reaching out to me when I was at AFL-CIO was a sign that he was trying to expand his horizons,” Thea Lee, who was then deputy chief of staff at the labor federation and is now president of the Economic Policy Institute, told me.
The Atlantic April 13, 2021 -
Before COVID-19, the gap between the bottom and top rungs of the economic ladder grew over many years. Between 1979 and 2015, the top 1% saw its income grow 229% in the U.S., according to the Economic Policy Institute. Income for the bottom 90% increased 46%. Federal tax cuts in 2017 disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
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Those people are in trouble if benefits end before they have work, and not even a robust rebound will immediately provide all the jobs needed, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Once evictions are allowed again, a lot of people who couldn’t pay the rent are in trouble,” she said. “Recovery is not going to happen in one fell swoop. I can’t imagine that inequality won’t be higher.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution April 13, 2021 -
For example, investments in the power grid are “needed to protect from catastrophic weather events, but also to allow us to move to renewable sources,” says Robert E. Scott, a senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Or better broadband internet access could make less commuting (and less carbon emissions) possible, he says.
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And that tracks for green jobs, too. Manufacturing jobs, including those in clean energy, will “generate large numbers of excellent jobs for non-college-educated workers,” says Scott. “Those are the people who’ve been left behind for the last 20 years.”
CNBC April 13, 2021 -
Conversely, the decline of unions has played a big role in rising inequality and wage stagnation. And workers have lost bargaining power as weak antitrust policies have allowed corporations to gain ever more market power.
New York Times April 13, 2021 -
Before COVID-19, the gap between the bottom and top rungs of the economic ladder grew over many years. Between 1979 and 2015, the top 1% saw its income grow 229% in the U.S., according to the Economic Policy Institute. Income for the bottom 90% increased 46%. Federal tax cuts in 2017 disproportionately benefited the wealthy.
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Those people are in trouble if benefits end before they have work, and not even a robust rebound will immediately provide all the jobs needed, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Once evictions are allowed again, a lot of people who couldn’t pay the rent are in trouble,” she said. “Recovery is not going to happen in one fell swoop. I can’t imagine that inequality won’t be higher.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution April 13, 2021 -
For example, investments in the power grid are “needed to protect from catastrophic weather events, but also to allow us to move to renewable sources,” says Robert E. Scott, a senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Or better broadband internet access could make less commuting (and less carbon emissions) possible, he says.
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And that tracks for green jobs, too. Manufacturing jobs, including those in clean energy, will “generate large numbers of excellent jobs for non-college-educated workers,” says Scott. “Those are the people who’ve been left behind for the last 20 years.”
CNBC April 13, 2021 -
Conversely, the decline of unions has played a big role in rising inequality and wage stagnation. And workers have lost bargaining power as weak antitrust policies have allowed corporations to gain ever more market power.
New York Times April 13, 2021 -
According to a study by the Wall Street Journal, entry-level college-graduate hiring has fallen 45% since the start of the pandemic. Young people were hit hardest by COVID-19-related unemployment: Per a report by the Economic Policy Institute, from spring 2019 to spring 2020, the unemployment rate for those 25 and older rose by 8.5% to 11.3%; the unemployment rate for workers age 16 through 24 rose by 16% to 24.4%. Many young people remain cut off from their academic networks, are grappling with lost internships, or meeting new coworkers for the first time over Zoom, as many offices remain remote.
Teen Vogue April 9, 2021 -
“That loss of more than half a million public sector jobs in the early days of the recovery coming out of the Great Recession, actually delayed the recovery by about four years,” said David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. “When you cut public sector staff, you’re not just losing that job, you’re also losing jobs in the private sector that are supported by those jobs.”
CBS News April 9, 2021 -
“That loss of more than half a million public sector jobs in the early days of the recovery coming out of the Great Recession, actually delayed the recovery by about four years,” said David Cooper of the Economic Policy Institute. “When you cut public sector staff, you’re not just losing that job, you’re also losing jobs in the private sector that are supported by those jobs.”
CBS News April 9, 2021 -
The decades-long assault on organized labor by corporations and their allies in government resulted in a dramatic erosion of union membership that cost the median U.S. worker $3,250 per year between 1979 and 2017, according to a new report released Thursday morning by the Economic Policy Institute.
The report estimates that the percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements fell from 27% in 1979 to just 11.6% in 2019, a drop that had a direct impact on the wages of unionized workers and “spillover” consequences for non-unionized workers, who benefit from strong union density.
EPI distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel, the lead author of the new report, estimates that “for the ‘typical’ or median worker, declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker.
Common Dreams April 9, 2021 -
Some policy experts are not bothered by the prospect of further ballooning the nation’s debt or deficit, given that the economy is still recovering from COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions.
“We’re talking about infrastructure here: it almost pays for itself, raises national productivity, causes fewer accidents and moves goods and services to places easier,” said Rob Scott of the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Al Jazeera April 9, 2021 -
What has changed, most notably, is the consensus among many economists. Whereas a few years ago, a key concern was the level of debt relative to GDP, with 90% to 100% considered a danger zone, now many are less worried about it.
“The economics field has shifted,” says Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist to the secretary of labor during the Obama administration.
The Christian Science Monitor April 9, 2021 -
Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator, voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though his state is one of the poorest in the nation and data from the Economic Policy Institute shows such an increase would boost the pay of some 250,000 residents by about $4,000 a year.
USA Today April 9, 2021 -
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
NBC News April 9, 2021 -
“I would be very surprised — I do not believe that that will be the sum total of what he is talking about on child care,” Elise Gould, an economist studying child care at the Economic Policy Institute, said of the package Biden revealed Wednesday. “But it’s pretty clear that if you’re going to invest in child care, yes, there are physical infrastructure needs — but it is an industry run by people who are providing that care, and we need to be investing in that workforce for the system to be high-quality and sustainable.”
Politico April 9, 2021 -
Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator, voted against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, even though his state is one of the poorest in the nation and data from the Economic Policy Institute shows such an increase would boost the pay of some 250,000 residents by about $4,000 a year.
USA Today April 9, 2021 -
Citing a study by the Economic Policy Institute, the Department of Energy further notes that the industry has one of “the highest indirect job employment multipliers, where one direct job leads to an additional 5.43 indirect jobs.” Put differently, for every job generated by the profitable production of oil and natural gas, there will be more than 5 jobs created in related industries. A 2015 study from the German government assessed that the similar economic multiplier from “green energy jobs” is around 2, or less than half the multiplier for the oil and gas industry.
Forbes April 9, 2021 -
The top corporate tax rate has been falling since the early 1950s. In 2013, the Economic Policy Institute pointed out that this rate was 52 percent throughout the Eisenhower administration — 17 percentage points higher than the 2013 rate of 35 percent. The U.S. GDP grew by almost 4 percent annually in the 1950s, compared with a 1.8 percent growth rate in the 2000s. The Trump tax cuts that lowered the rate to 21 percent also make the case that economic growth is not linked to severe cuts in business taxes. After the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, only 4 percent of businesses increased hiring, according to a survey by the National Association for Business and the Economy. The Tax Policy Center found that the U.S. economy grew more slowly during the two years after the tax cuts than the two years before they took effect, and that business fixed investment was “slightly negative for the year, a sharp contrast to the nearly 5 percent real growth rate in 2017” before the tax cuts.
The Hill April 9, 2021 -
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
NBC News April 9, 2021