At least one survey from the Economic Policy Institute found that millions of Americans gave up trying to seek benefits or didn’t even attempt to due to states’ overwhelmed and antiquated unemployment systems.
The Denver Channel
June 29, 2020
And they are doing this difficult work for low pay. Average pay for farmworkers in 2019 was $13.99 per hour – 60% of what U.S. production and nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture averaged, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. For the rising share who come to the U.S. on a guest-worker basis, the federally set minimum ranges by state from $11.71 to $15.83 an hour, after a proposed reduction was averted this spring.
Christian Science Monitor
June 29, 2020
Though new weekly unemployment claims have fallen since the peak in late March, the Economic Policy Institute notes that new weekly claims are still “more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.” And, the EPI reports, the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits after initially filing when the pandemic first hit is still very high. With some experts estimating that 30% of COVID-19 job losses could be permanent, the end of PUA could be devastating to many. About 11 million Americans are currently receiving PUA, and the EPI points out that coronavirus job loss is impacting Black and Latinx workers at much higher rates, further widening economic inequality along racial lines.
Refinery29
June 29, 2020
Adding together all the individuals on the various state and federal unemployment programs, 33.1 million workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to receive benefits, according to The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz: “That is more than one in five workers.”
Politico Morning Shift
June 29, 2020
“Letting this extra $600 in unemployment insurance benefit expire at the end of July would by itself cause more job loss than was seen in either of the recessions of the early 1990s or early 2000s,” writes Josh Bivens, director of research for the Economic Policy Institute. Going forward, Bivens predicts that extending the $600 unemployment benefits through the middle of next year would provide an average GDP quarterly boost of 3.7% and employment of 5.1 million workers.
CNBC
June 29, 2020
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, told CNN Business that “cutting off a policy support that helps households maintain spending is a terrible idea, both for these households’ welfare and for macroeconomic stabilization.” Bivens also added that he believes extending the additional $600 under the HEROES Act through the middle of next year “would provide an average quarterly boost to gross domestic product of 3.7% and employment of 5.1 million workers.”
iHeartRadio
June 29, 2020
“It is just deeply disturbing,” Heidi Shierholz, chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration, said of the unemployment figures. “I do think that people are getting hired back, but we are continuing to see an absolute hemorrhaging of jobs. Just record levels of people.”
Washington Post
June 29, 2020
Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper puts the argument well: , “If a store’s rent goes up, they might be able to raise prices to offset the added expense, but there is no reason why a landlord raising the rent would mean that the store’s clientele suddenly have more money to spend. However, if a local minimum wage hike drives a business to modestly raise its prices, at least the store owners know that workers throughout the local economy are receiving larger paychecks. This is one reason why decades of research have shown that businesses are generally able to absorb higher minimum wages without any meaningful negative impact on jobs.”
Common Dreams
June 29, 2020
Wealth inequality in the U.S. is intrinsically linked to the racial wealth gap, Valerie Wilson, the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, told ABC News.
“If we’re seeing growth wealth inequality in general then it almost goes without question to say that the racial wealth gap is widening as well because a lot of the underlying racial disparities throughout the economy in wages, employment, income,” Wilson said. “Part of getting to recovery has to do with addressing these holes that have been opened even more by the pandemic.”
ABC News
June 29, 2020