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
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
“The missing piece is hiring,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former Department of Labor economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post. “If there are a large number of layoffs, there can still be job growth if there is also a lot of hiring (or rehiring). 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.”
Sinclair Broadcast Group
June 22, 2020
The report is a drab reminder of the poor employment landscape, despite a stunning jobs report that showed nonfarm jobs rose by 2.5 million in May. “We would need to see the same level of job growth for months and months and months to fill in the current jobs deficit,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Courthouse News Service
June 22, 2020
New research by the Economic Policy Institute connects the murder of George Floyd to a much older history of extrajudicial murder by the country’s “law enforcement” agents and other white enforcers of the color line:
Salon
June 22, 2020
While some companies are rehiring as states loosen restrictions and the number of initial claims dropped slightly, the 1.5 million people who applied for benefits was still historic. “It’s still more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told the New York Times.
Route Fifty
June 22, 2020
“All in all, today’s UI [unemployment insurance] data highlight the deep recession we are now in,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a Thursday morning blog post.
Newsweek
June 22, 2020