Economists have repeatedly warned that allowing the enhanced unemployment benefits to expire at the end of July would slash the incomes of more than 30 million Americans by 50-75%. According to Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, such a steep income cut could also cause massive job losses and a decline in economic growth.
Common Dreams
July 16, 2020
Economic Policy Institute reseracher Josh Bivens told Common Dreams that budget cuts in the context of the pandemic-triggered recession are a recipe for economic disaster.
“We have noted estimates of the state and local shortfalls between now and the end of 2021 hover around $1 trillion,” said Bivens, “and if we do nothing to close that gap, we’ll end 2021 with roughly 5 million fewer jobs in the U.S. economy than we otherwise would have had.”
Common Dreams
July 16, 2020
That can make it very hard to determine if your job is safe, or if you’ve been furloughed, if your job is coming back. For some, those job losses will be permanent. About 11% of Americans who are out of work because of the coronavirus pandemic don’t have a good chance of getting called back to their old jobs, according to recent research from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. And with coronavirus cases increasing in several states, there are recent signs that layoffs may start to increase again and hiring will slow down.
CNBC
July 16, 2020
“During this pandemic crisis, those who have been told they’re self employed, their employer hasn’t been paying into unemployment insurance or workers compensation or providing them with sick leave,” said Lawrence Mishel, a senior labor-market economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank.
Yakima Herald
July 16, 2020
Maintaining these jobs is particularly important for local communities because of the economic multiplier effect, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. That $721 billion in public school spending in 2018 translated to about $1.08 trillion in direct GDP output, she calculates, not including the economic benefits of better-educated workers.
Reuters
July 16, 2020
The Biden picks tilted in an egalitarian direction as well, with the co-chair slot going to Representative Karen Bass from California, the current chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a Congressional Progressive Caucus member. Biden’s five picks also included Jared Bernstein, a widely visible advocate for equity since his days at the Economic Policy Institute, and Lee Saunders, the president of one of the nation’s top public employee unions.
Inequality.org
July 16, 2020
The combination of “just-in-time” scheduling and racial disparities in employment outcomes are connected with racial differences in wealth, said Jhacova Williams, an economist at the think tank Economic Policy Institute not involved in the study.
“If you’re not working the amount of hours that you need to work, that means that you have low wages,” Williams said. “So how do you build wealth if you have lower wages?”
Bloomberg
July 16, 2020
July 24 marks 11 years — the longest stretch without an increase since the federal wage was enacted in 1938. The federal law applies if the state does not have its own minimum wage law. Since the last increase to the federal minimum wage, the value of that money has not kept pace. For example, the federal minimum wage in 1968 is equivalent to $10.54 in recent dollars, according to a 2019 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
July 16, 2020
Since the establishment of the Wagner Act in 1935, private-sector workers have been legally guaranteed the right to organize workplace unions and collectively bargain. But according to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, more than 41 percent of employers were found to have violated the federal law in union election campaigns. According to Celine McNicholas, labor counsel for the EPI and co-author of the report, part of the reason companies feel secure in breaking the law by firing workers or threatening to discipline them for organizing a union is that the enforcement of the law is lax, cases brought by unfairly discharged workers can drag on for years, and the penalties to many employers — rehiring the employee plus back pay, which deducts any income they earned from another job — are a slap on the wrist compared to having to deal with a more expensive and protected workforce.
“Even if it’s patently illegal under the NLRB, with the particular way it’s being enforced in this administration, employers are able to bend and break the law with relative impunity in really egregious cases,” McNicholas says, adding that there are “not adequate remedies and enforcement methods to make it scary enough for employers not to do it.”
Eater
July 16, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor and current senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, cautioned that there is still so much uncertainty when it comes to predicting the recovery, but what’s starting to become apparent is that a lot of jobs that were lost are not coming back any time soon.
“There’s never been more uncertainty about trying to predict where things are going because there are so many more moving parts,” Shierholz told ABC News.
ABC News
July 16, 2020