Washington – If Connecticut does not receive more stimulus money from the federal government, nearly 60,000 jobs in the state could be lost, hampering an economic recovery, an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute says.
The Connecticut Mirror
June 12, 2020
The need for Biden to push a more progressive policy agenda should now be apparent to former skeptics in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, suggested Sanders. The public health and economic crisis caused by the outbreak has so far pushed more than 16 million Americans off their employer-sponsored health insurance, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and has caused an explosion in demand at food banks across the U.S. as many unemployed people began struggling to afford basic necessities after missing just one or two paychecks.
Salon
June 12, 2020
This decidedly dismal rebuke to past dreams of progress was bad enough—but it turned out that even that assessment wasn’t dismal enough. By 2016, research by economists Kerwin K. Charles (then at the University of Chicago; now at Yale) and Patrick Bayer (Duke) and by Valerie Wilson (the Economic Policy Institute) and William M. Rodgers III (then at EPI, now at Rutgers), indicated that the black-white income gap had widened since 2000. Indeed, Charles and Bayer concluded that the gap had been widening since 1980; as a result, the median black-white earning gap stood—in 2016!—where it was all the way back in 1950, when the southern Jim Crow regime still affixed “White” and “Colored” signs above drinking fountains.
The New Republic
June 12, 2020
Importantly however, these individuals were in many ways already excluded from the dynamic growth that characterized the months—and years—preceding this latest crisis, magnifying systemic racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic injustice and inequity. The Economic Policy Institute studied wages and inequality over the past two decades and found constant and—and in some cases worsening—wage gaps by gender and race. The black–white gap was significantly larger in 2019 (14.9%) than it was in 2000 (10.2%).
Atlantic Council
June 12, 2020
Further, many Americans who have returned to work face reduced hours and pay cuts—as well as uncertainty about how long their employment will last. “People are coming back to work in jobs that are very different than they were three months ago,” Robert Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told the Washington Post‘s Tony Romm and Jacob Bogage. “They’re very risky and there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s to come,” Scott said.
Advisory Board
June 12, 2020
“Racism generates exclusion, discrimination, oppression, exploitation in a number of ways,” Valerie Wilson, the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy. “It’s not just physical violence.”
The Root
June 12, 2020
“Older workers are less likely to have the kinds of jobs that allow telework in the first place,” says Monique Morrisey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, another D.C.think tank. “And they’re very steady and reliable; they tend to take less leave then younger workers.” For these reasons, she thinks employers should focus on bolstering workplace safety. She echoes Johnson’s call for stronger unemployment benefits for seniors until the virus plays itself out.
MarketWatch
June 12, 2020
“It’s clear that the pace of recovery is not even for all groups,” Valerie Wilson — the director of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity, and the economy — told Business Insider.
Business Insider
June 12, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute notes that corporate CEOs enjoyed record earning last year. Their average annual earnings were $17.2 million each, far exceeding any amount imaginable for a minimum wage worker. Professor Ellora Delenoncourt, an incoming economist at the University of California- Berkeley, also noted in the Wall Street Journal that blacks “headed into the crisis extremely vulnerable. Then jobs also left them more exposed to the coronavirus. Black and Latino workers have the lowest working-from-home rates and are more likely to work in industries considered essential. Inequality is a co-morbidity in the Covid-19 pandemic,” she concluded.
The Register-Herald
June 12, 2020