Heidi Shierholz tweets on jobs report embedded in story.
NBC News
July 6, 2020
Opposing a permanent solution to these problems is fundamentally immoral. The absence of a federal paid-leave program that covers all private-sector workers also hurts our economy. It can devastate the well-being of millions of American families on tight budgets. Just “three days of unpaid sick time translate into a household’s monthly utilities budget, preventing the worker from paying for electricity and heat,” according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.
The Hill
July 6, 2020
Since the 1970s, wages and benefits have stagnated, falling out of step with workers’ productivity. Source: Economic Policy Institute
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
July 6, 2020
“Unfortunately, deepening pain is on the horizon. As bad as the labor market is, it’s likely that June is a temporary respite from the storm,” wrote Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
“Given the increase in coronavirus over the last couple of weeks along with re-shuttering of businesses as well as the pending expiration (on July 25th) of the $600 enhanced weekly unemployment insurance benefits, June’s labor market—as weak as it is—is the best we can expect for a while,” she added.
CNBC
July 2, 2020
Economists are split over the value of such a break. “Refundable payroll tax credits that are used for PPE or other protections for consumers and workers seems sensible to me,” said Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.
He suggested limiting any break based on how many workers a business employs, “to reduce how gameable it is,” and combining it with other stimulus, notably extending the $600 unemployment benefit that is set to expire at the end of July.
Bradenton Herald
July 2, 2020
Opoku-Agyeman: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I literally just published an article, and it’s with the Economic Policy Institute about “Black women best,” which is an economic policy idea coined by Janelle Jones, who is one of the managing directors at the Groundwork [Collaborative]. And pretty much this idea says if we center the economy around Black women, everybody is alleviated in terms of outcomes. And so in order to do that, you actually have to have Black women in the room, right? And one thing that we’ve recently seen is, there’s no Black women in the Federal Reserve leadership. And so it’s really important that those individuals who are making important decisions at a high level are representative of the world that they’re hoping to make decisions for.
Marketplace
July 2, 2020
Josh Bivens with the Economic Policy Institute is urging Congress to extend the $600 weekly supplement until mid-2021 to keep the economy from collapsing. Each dollar spent on unemployment insurance benefits boosts spending by as much as $2, he argues.
When the economy is still struggling to get up on its feet, “cutting off a policy support that helps households maintain spending is a terrible idea, both for these households’ welfare and for macroeconomic stabilization,” Bivens writes.
AFSCME
July 2, 2020
More than 50 percent of Americans get their health insurance through their employer. Since mid-March, close to 47 million Americans have sought jobless aid. A recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute forecast that 3.5 million workers lost their insurance in just the last two weeks of March.
Fox Business
July 2, 2020
An Economic Policy Institute study found that only 16 percent of the 60 million Latinos in the U.S. can work from home—we disproportionately work in the service industries that are considered “essential.”
Latino Rebels
July 2, 2020
Just over 1 in 10 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.
CNBC
July 2, 2020