The Class of 2020 is graduating into a stubbornly persistent gender pay gap: A survey by the Economic Policy Institute found that, right out of college, women make about $3 less per hour than men. Part of the reason for this is the kinds of jobs women pursue. Fields that have historically dominated by men simply pay better than female-dominated ones, even when they require the same level of education, training and skill. But the pandemic is shining the spotlight on the importance of so-called “women’s work.” A recent New York Times analysis of census data found that one in three jobs held by women has been designated as “essential.”
NBC News
June 17, 2020
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, says back-to-work incentives could be effective if they’re implemented as a supplement, rather than a replacement to enhanced unemployment insurance (UI).
“If you’re worried about the incentive effect of UI benefits being higher than going wages, the way to solve this is to let people keep a big chunk of their UI benefit even as they go back to work (or you could also do things like universal hazard pay to boost going wages),” Bivens writes in an email to Forbes Advisor.
Expanding unemployment insurance to people who are working might seem counterproductive, but Bivens argues that phasing payments out over time would be better than cutting the benefits cold turkey. Keeping the benefits, Bivens says, would provide as much as a boost in spending in the coming months as possible—which he says the economy “really needs.”
Forbes
June 17, 2020
“This has been driven by pretty intentional policy decisions, and the root of all those policy decisions has been an attempt to tilt the playing field away from typical workers and towards employers and capital owners in the labor market,” Josh Bivens, an economist at the labor-union-affiliated Economic Policy Institute, told me. “Ten years ago, if you would ask people about inequality, even people who call themselves liberal Democrats, they would have been genuinely concerned about it and genuinely thought it was a bad thing. But there’s this predominant view that it was a sad accident of apolitical market forces or technological developments.”
The Atlantic
June 17, 2020
(With regard to the minimum required wage for the H-1B, it’s worth noting the recent spat between the Economic Policy Institute and the Cato Institute, with analysts from both organizations arguing whether H-1B holders are under- or over-paid.)
Dice Insights
June 17, 2020
About 2.2 million people are domestic workers in the United States, many informally employed as cleaners, nannies and home carers, ineligible for jobless benefits or sick pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) think-tank.
Thomson Reuters Foundation News
June 17, 2020
Economic Policy Institute, Not everybody can work from home, March 19, 2020
Politifact
June 17, 2020
Analysis from the Minneapolis Fed for example shows that African Americans with a BA or higher have similar levels of unemployment to Whites with only some college education (i.e. no degree) and that average annual wages of African American workers with a college degree is lower than their white counterparts. Analysis from the Economic Policy Institute shows this is true at various levels of education.
Medium
June 17, 2020
“There are people receiving hazard pay, but it’s nowhere near the extent of risk,” said Lawrence Mishel, a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute. “The gaps are even larger for people who have less bargaining power in the labor market which tend to be lower- and middle-wage workers and workers of color — black and Hispanic.”
Seven in 10 black workers who work outside of their home are fearful, but only 4 of 10 have received some form of hazard pay to work during those riskier times.
“It’s those who have the least power in the labor market that face the most risk,” Mishel said, “and aren’t necessarily getting hazard pay.”
Yahoo Finance
June 17, 2020
The statistics are sobering. Black workers are paid less than white workers, even in high-wage positions. Research shows that the black-white wage gap has been widening for decades, even during periods of economic expansion. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the overall average wage for black workers in 2019 was $21.05. For white workers, it was $28.66. As a result, in the U.S., Black households have one-tenth the wealth of a typical white household, according to Federal Reserve data.
USA Today
June 17, 2020