A report in early May from the Economic Policy Institute found that 60% of H-1B positions are paid lower than the local median wage for that job. Top users are Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook, EPI said.
The Washington Times
June 1, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute reports that “state and local governments are currently forecast to be facing revenue shortfalls as large as $1 trillion over the coming years. If no help is forthcoming from the federal government to close these shortfalls, the result will be an economic disaster — one that is not confined to these governments. (epi.org, May 19)
“Besides the obvious loss of valuable public services, cuts of this size would quickly ripple out from the public sector and destroy private-sector jobs.” (epi.org, May 19)
Mundo Obrero Workers World
June 1, 2020
Since March 7, when COVID-19-related job losses began being reported in Washington, 397,845 coronavirus-related claims were filed and 345,804 coronavirus emergency unemployment claims were filed, according to ESD data. The numbers, including the potentially fraudulent claims, total more than double the number predicted by the Economic Policy Institute in early March.
The EPI projected that more than 300,000 Washingtonians could lose their jobs by June due to economic impacts created by Gov. Jay Inslee’s executive order closing businesses he deemed nonessential.
The Center Square
June 1, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute graft, below, shows how government policies reduced economic inequality after the Roaring Twenties, but how inequality increased after the 1970s.
Daily Kos
June 1, 2020
“First responders would fit that—they have some sort of schedule but then they end up having to stay because of some extended emergency,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
June 1, 2020
Infant child care costs Wisconsin families more than $1,000 a month on average, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Yet early childhood teachers make an average of $10.33 an hourin the state, despite being more educated on average than the typical Wisconsin worker.
Wisconsin Public Radio
June 1, 2020
OSHA has faced criticism during the pandemic for not being more responsive to worker concerns. That may drive health care workers to take other legal routes when facing retaliation, says Terri Gerstein, a labor attorney who directs the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. Gerstein is also a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s so important that employers understand that when people raise these kinds of safety concerns, it’s not an adversarial thing,” she says. “They are trying to make their workplace safer and stem the spread of this horrible disease.”
NPR
June 1, 2020
What it means: Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, notes that 19.1 million workers were on continued claims as of May 16, and 4.1 million more have filed initial state unemployment claims since then.
- Add those to the PUA numbers for initial and continued claims and it equals a total of “34.2 million workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied very recently and are waiting to get approved,” she says on Twitter.
Axios
June 1, 2020
Different decisions will affect different populations and economic sectors in varying ways. Some Illinois residents have been hit with a double whammy: they are vulnerable both to the virus itself and to the economic fallout. An analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from the Economic Policy Institute found that African American and Latino workers are much less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home. Under the current conditions, these individuals are bearing more risk — either to being infected while at work or to economic hardship from losing their jobs. In Illinois and across the nation, African American and Latino populations have been disproportionately affected by the virus.
NPR Illinois
June 1, 2020