At the Economic Policy Institute, Josh Bivens and David Cooper write:
- If policymakers do nothing at the federal level to address these shortfalls, the United States could end 2021 with 5.3 million fewer jobs, with losses in every state.
- Further, if Congress passes some level of aid that is insufficient—less than $1 trillion—they will needlessly guarantee a significant job gap by the end of 2021.
- If they pass $500 billion of aid over that time, the jobs gap will likely be roughly 2.6 million. If they pass $300 billion of aid, the jobs gap will likely be roughly 3.7 million.
- While empirical estimates of the shortfall should guide policymakers’ thinking, they can (and actually should) avoid putting a firm sticker price on state and local aid by tying this aid to economic conditions. If the economy recovers faster than the forecasts driving the $1 trillion estimated shortfall indicate will happen, then less aid would be needed. If instead recovery lagged, more would be needed.
- Finally, filling in the estimated shortfalls would merely return state and local governments to their pre-crisis fiscal status quo. But the unique features of the current economic shock will put greater demands on public services than existed before the crisis. To go beyond macroeconomic stabilization and promote the general welfare, even more federal aid to these governments is likely needed.
Daily Kos
June 12, 2020
Importantly however, these individuals were in many ways already excluded from the dynamic growth that characterized the months—and years—preceding this latest crisis, magnifying systemic racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic injustice and inequity. The Economic Policy Institute studied wages and inequality over the past two decades and found constant and—and in some cases worsening—wage gaps by gender and race. The black–white gap was significantly larger in 2019 (14.9%) than it was in 2000 (10.2%).
Atlantic Council
June 12, 2020
Further, many Americans who have returned to work face reduced hours and pay cuts—as well as uncertainty about how long their employment will last. “People are coming back to work in jobs that are very different than they were three months ago,” Robert Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told the Washington Post‘s Tony Romm and Jacob Bogage. “They’re very risky and there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s to come,” Scott said.
Advisory Board
June 12, 2020
“Older workers are less likely to have the kinds of jobs that allow telework in the first place,” says Monique Morrisey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, another D.C.think tank. “And they’re very steady and reliable; they tend to take less leave then younger workers.” For these reasons, she thinks employers should focus on bolstering workplace safety. She echoes Johnson’s call for stronger unemployment benefits for seniors until the virus plays itself out.
MarketWatch
June 12, 2020
But the Bipartisan Policy Center’s work revealed that African Americans were more likely to lose employment as a result of the crisis — in fact, according to the Economic Policy Institute, black women suffered the largest job losses of any group. And sadly, there is much evidence to show that the traditional American antipathy toward generous social welfare benefits is rooted not in our can-do, self-help beliefs, but in our attitudes toward race.
Washington Post
June 12, 2020
Curt isn’t alone in his age cohort when it comes to lacking the ability to work from home if he chooses. According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, only 6.7 percent of workers ages 15-24 are able to telework. It’s not necessarily surprising, given the type of jobs teenagers and people in their early 20s often land. It’s dangerous for them and their families because they risk getting infected and then infecting older members of their households.
Examining the data on who can and can’t work from home paints a clear picture of who’s taking on risk and who isn’t. According to EPI, 80 percent of black workers and 84 percent of Hispanic workers can’t work from home, and high-wage workers are six times likelier to be able to work from home than low-wage workers. And those low-wage jobs often translate to fewer benefits. Recent research for the Center for Employment Equity out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that low-wage workers in Massachusetts have less safety gear, paid sick leave, and health insurance, and they report being less able to meet basic needs, like affording food. The patterns are consistently worse for black and Hispanic workers.
“It magnifies the inequality and disparities we had before, economic and racial inequalities,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. She warned of a “divided world” of haves and have-nots, where people who keep their jobs and work from home are better able to respond.
VOX
June 12, 2020
“It’s clear that the pace of recovery is not even for all groups,” Valerie Wilson — the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy — told Business Insider.
Business Insider
June 12, 2020
Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington points to the proliferation of viral videos on social media highlighting racial inequities — a factor brought to the foreground amid a wave of social unrest sparked by the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
“Even though those aren’t explicitly economic issues, I think there’s something about seeing the blatant racism and inequality that continues to persist in this country that serves to elevate people’s consciousness about race, and racial inequality in a number of different aspects,” Wilson said.
Bloomberg
June 12, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) on Wednesday published the conclusions of a bipartisan panel of economists, warning that some 5.3 million more jobs would be lost by the end of 2021 if the federal government does not provide a significant amount of federal aid to state and local governments facing major budget shortfalls because of the coronavirus pandemic. The analysis said that the level of aid should total more than $1 trillion to avoid significant job losses.
“While empirical estimates of the shortfall should guide policymakers’ thinking, they can (and actually should) avoid putting a firm sticker price on state and local aid by tying this aid to economic conditions,” EPI analysts Josh Bivens and David Cooper wrote. “If the economy recovers faster than the forecasts driving the $1 trillion estimated shortfall indicate will happen, then less aid would be needed. If instead recovery lagged, more would be needed.”
Newsweek
June 12, 2020
Some have argued those generous benefits will keep people from seeking new jobs. But extending the $600 unemployment benefit would mean that Americans would have more money to spend in stores, and that could ultimately lead to lower unemployment, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based in Washington, D.C., said.
“It’s not true that there’s a pool of jobs out there that people would fill if they weren’t receiving unemployment benefits,” she said.
MarketWatch
June 12, 2020