As recently as May, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report (read here), which called the program “flawed” and pointed out that 60 percent of H-1B “positions…are assigned wages well below the local median wage for the occupation.” The top 30 H-1B employers, according to EPI, include Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook. “All of them take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill,” the EPI report points out. And that, as the old saying goes, is the rest of the story.
Newsweek
June 29, 2020
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute argued in favor of the bonus unemployment by pointing out “When the economy’s growth is demand-constrained, anything that keeps households from cutting back on spending actually supports growth,” he said. “Cutting off a policy support that helps households maintain spending is a terrible idea, both for these households’ welfare and for macroeconomic stabilization.”
Jewish Voice
June 29, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reports that 93% of the highest-paid private-sector workers have paid sick leave and are the most likely to work remotely. In contrast, only 30% of the lowest-paid workers receive paid sick leave, and these workers are the least likely to work from home.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
June 29, 2020
In total, that would mean that Americans would have $842 billion less to spend to pay for their own food and living expenses, according to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
MarketWatch
June 29, 2020
Wage gap for degreed Black and white workers increased between 2000 – 2018 from 17.2% to 21% (Economic Policy Institute, 2019)
Loudon Now
June 29, 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
June 29, 2020
Economic Policy Institute’s David Cooper puts the argument well: , “If a store’s rent goes up, they might be able to raise prices to offset the added expense, but there is no reason why a landlord raising the rent would mean that the store’s clientele suddenly have more money to spend. However, if a local minimum wage hike drives a business to modestly raise its prices, at least the store owners know that workers throughout the local economy are receiving larger paychecks. This is one reason why decades of research have shown that businesses are generally able to absorb higher minimum wages without any meaningful negative impact on jobs.”
Common Dreams
June 29, 2020
Wealth inequality in the U.S. is intrinsically linked to the racial wealth gap, Valerie Wilson, the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, told ABC News.
“If we’re seeing growth wealth inequality in general then it almost goes without question to say that the racial wealth gap is widening as well because a lot of the underlying racial disparities throughout the economy in wages, employment, income,” Wilson said. “Part of getting to recovery has to do with addressing these holes that have been opened even more by the pandemic.”
ABC News
June 29, 2020
Rothstein, a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute, has documented a lengthy list of historical examples which suggest that housing segregation was not only intentional, but that it still remains at the heart of so many racially oriented disparities within our nation: education, income, health and more.
Palo Alto Online
June 29, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to shutter businesses for good, the loss of Massachusetts’s childcare facilities would be a devastating blow to an industry that was already in crisis pre-pandemic. The Commonwealth is the second most expensive state in the country for infant care, costing on average $20,913 annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
North End Waterfront
June 29, 2020