Research by Daniel Costa, of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and Howard University political science professor Ron Hira, found that 60% of H-1B workers receive lower-than-average wages for their job and region. Google, Facebook and Apple “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,” Costa and Hira said in an Economic Policy Institute paper.
The Mercury News
June 29, 2020
All of that money is set to disappear when those benefits expire next month, according to Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute. “That’s going to be a really sharp blow to personal income when that happens,” he said. After that, he continued, there’s another economic blow on the way.
Marketplace
June 29, 2020
Heidi Shierholz is director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor.
94.1 KPFA
June 29, 2020
At least one survey from the Economic Policy Institute found that millions of Americans gave up trying to seek benefits or didn’t even attempt to due to states’ overwhelmed and antiquated unemployment systems.
The Denver Channel
June 29, 2020
And they are doing this difficult work for low pay. Average pay for farmworkers in 2019 was $13.99 per hour – 60% of what U.S. production and nonsupervisory workers outside of agriculture averaged, according to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. For the rising share who come to the U.S. on a guest-worker basis, the federally set minimum ranges by state from $11.71 to $15.83 an hour, after a proposed reduction was averted this spring.
Christian Science Monitor
June 29, 2020
Though new weekly unemployment claims have fallen since the peak in late March, the Economic Policy Institute notes that new weekly claims are still “more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.” And, the EPI reports, the number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits after initially filing when the pandemic first hit is still very high. With some experts estimating that 30% of COVID-19 job losses could be permanent, the end of PUA could be devastating to many. About 11 million Americans are currently receiving PUA, and the EPI points out that coronavirus job loss is impacting Black and Latinx workers at much higher rates, further widening economic inequality along racial lines.
Refinery29
June 29, 2020
Adding together all the individuals on the various state and federal unemployment programs, 33.1 million workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to receive benefits, according to The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz: “That is more than one in five workers.”
Politico Morning Shift
June 29, 2020
“Letting this extra $600 in unemployment insurance benefit expire at the end of July would by itself cause more job loss than was seen in either of the recessions of the early 1990s or early 2000s,” writes Josh Bivens, director of research for the Economic Policy Institute. Going forward, Bivens predicts that extending the $600 unemployment benefits through the middle of next year would provide an average GDP quarterly boost of 3.7% and employment of 5.1 million workers.
CNBC
June 29, 2020
“It is just deeply disturbing,” Heidi Shierholz, chief economist at the Department of Labor during the Obama administration, said of the unemployment figures. “I do think that people are getting hired back, but we are continuing to see an absolute hemorrhaging of jobs. Just record levels of people.”
Washington Post
June 29, 2020
Since the early 1980s, the total share of income claimed by the bottom 90 percent of Americans has steadily decreased, with the majority of income gains going to the top 1 percent. The Economic Policy Institute states, “Rising inequality might not be such a major concern if our education, economic, and social protection systems acted as compensatory mechanisms, helping individuals, and especially children, rise above their birth circumstances and improve their mobility. But that is hardly the case.” America’s reputation as “the land of opportunity” seems suspect, with pockets of persistent poverty — especially in communities of color.
San Diego Union Tribune
June 29, 2020