“Cutting off that $600 will exacerbate racial and ethnic inequality, it will exacerbate gender inequality,” said the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz, former DOL chief economist. She called the money “a lifeline for many women, many minorities — Black and Hispanic workers in particular.”
“It is not a stretch to say this policy choice is also a racial justice policy choice.”
Politico
July 10, 2020
Because they believe — and as history has proven — that education “is one piece of moving the ball forward” and integral to individual success as well as a functioning democracy and social justice, Nashville-based Bulk Bookstore has curated a special collection of ten important and influential books on racial equality. Offered at-cost to schools, community libraries, police departments, businesses and anyone interested in the BLM movement, Bulk Bookstore’s Equality Library contains works by Angela Davis, Harvard Professor Cornell West, Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute Richard Rothstein as well as other prominent scholars and activists.
Vegas News
July 10, 2020
Wages as a share of the U.S. economy are near their lowest level since the Federal Reserve began collecting such data in the 1940s. Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that CEO compensation has grown more than 900% over the past four decades, compared with just 12% for the typical worker.
Bloomberg
July 10, 2020
In 2019, 25.8% of these young workers had jobs in leisure and hospitality compared to 7.4% of workers 25-years-old and older, according to an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-focused think tank. That sector lost nearly 41.8% of its jobs between February and May 2020.
MarketWatch
July 10, 2020
That’s according to the Economic Policy Institute, an independent, nonprofit think tank that researches the impact of economic trends and policies on working people. The actual rate of May’s unemployment was a staggering 19.7%. What the official 21 million worker employment rate fails to include are the 4.9 million furloughed workers (misclassified as “employed, not at work”) and the 6.6 million who have dropped out of the labor force as a result of the virus. Add it all up and it means 32.5 million people are jobless—nearly one in five workers.
Globe St.
July 10, 2020
Meanwhile, research from the Economic Policy Institute suggests that 17.6 million jobs will be lost to the pandemic permanently.
CNBC
July 10, 2020
Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of mid-June, the U.S. the economy had 14.7 million fewer jobs than it did in February of this year, according to a blog post from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). And for the 16th week in a row, unemployment claims are still more than two times higher than they were for the worst week of the Great Recession.
Next City
July 10, 2020
Many workers going on strike are essential, meaning they have risked contracting the novel coronavirus by continuing to physically go to work. Essential workers are disproportionately Black and Latino, per the Economic Policy Institute — the two communities that have seen the highest rate of COVID-19 cases.
Business Insider
July 10, 2020
It’s more likely that recent layoffs won’t be temporary, like many of those in the early weeks had been, as businesses that had stayed open and kept their workforce intact are struggling with a drop in demand for their goods and services, Shierholz said.
“We’re still seeing an enormous amount of job losses,” said Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “And they’re of particular concern because they’re more likely to be permanent.
“Getting laid off in the middle of a very deep recession spells a high likelihood of seeing a big drop in your living standards that is lasting,” she added.
CNBC
July 10, 2020