Jhacova Williams (Race and Inequality) is an economist for the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE). In this capacity, she explores the role of structural racism in shaping racial economic disparities in labor markets, housing, criminal justice, higher education, and other areas that have a direct impact on economic outcomes. Williams’s research has focused on Southern culture and the extent to which historical events continue to impact the political behavior and economic outcomes of Southern Blacks.
Valerie Wilson (Labor Economics) is the director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE), a nationally recognized source for expert reports and policy analyses on the economic condition of America’s people of color. Prior to joining EPI, Wilson was an economist and vice president of research at the National Urban League Washington Bureau. She has written extensively on various issues impacting economic inequality in the United States—including employment and training, income and wealth disparities, access to higher education, and social insurance.
Fortune
June 22, 2020
It was the 13th-straight week that filings topped 1 million. Until the present crisis, the most new claims in a single week had been 695,000, in 1982.
“It’s still more than twice the worst week of the [the last recession],” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. “It’s a sustained hemorrhaging of jobs unlike anything we’ve seen before.”
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
June 22, 2020
Older workers are less likely than younger ones to have jobs that can be done remotely, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. Almost 8 in 10 workers over 65 can’t telecommute, compared with about 6 in 10 between 35 to 44, the analysis found.
USA Today
June 22, 2020
Black-owned businesses were more likely to be in industries hit hard by coronavirus-related restrictions, such as retail and hospitality, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented think tank.
And when some relief finally came in the form of PPP loans for small businesses, Black business owners faced hurdles in getting approval, according to the EPI study. A major hurdle was the lack of preexisting relationships with the larger banks that were first to administer the loans, the study said.
LA Times
June 22, 2020
As we know the economy has been hammered by the COVID-19 shutdowns. Robert Scott is Senior Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and he says things could get even worse before they get better.
Richard French Live
June 22, 2020
There’s also the racial wage gap: the Economic Policy Institute says that in 2017, Black men made about 70 cents for every $1 their White counterpart made. The gap is especially large when it comes to Black women, who make 62 cents for every $1 a White man makes, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
The Skimm
June 22, 2020
Most students are taught about the Jim Crow-era efforts to keep schools separate and unequal, but fewer probably know contemporary education shows levels of segregation not seen since before the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision. For example, a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute found that black children are five times as likely as white children to attend racially and ethnically segregated schools and twice as likely to attend “high-poverty” schools.
The Washington Post
June 22, 2020
With the labor market in a state of unprecedented turmoil, the data is coming in so quickly that it can be difficult to see the clear trendlines. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute attempted to straighten out some of the crooked lines in a blog post Thursday.
The Fiscal Times
June 22, 2020
“In today’s gradually reopening coronavirus economy, hires (or rehires) are now outpacing job losses, but we are still seeing a huge number of people losing jobs,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post. Shierholz added that the recession is going to “exacerbate existing racial inequalities by causing greater job loss in Black and Hispanic households than in white households.”
CBS News
June 22, 2020