But decreasing those benefits could cost the country even more jobs on top of the historic 40 million jobs that have already been wiped away by the coronavirus pandemic, Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based in Washington, D.C., said.
“If the extra $600 unemployment benefit expires, millions of Americans will have less money to spend in stores, and that could ultimately lead to more unemployment.” — Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute
MarketWatch
May 28, 2020
The human rights group Oxfam has ranked Virginia dead last in its ranking of the “best places to work in America.” States with right-to-work laws have wages that are, on average, 3.1% lower than pro-union states, according to a 2015 study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Huffington Post
May 28, 2020
More than 36 million people have filed for unemployment benefits due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, meaning millions will be left without health insurance. In mid May, left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute estimated 16.2 million people have lost health insurance once provided by their employer — how roughly half of Americans get their health insurance. That number could be as high as 26.8 million if those who lost their jobs don’t sign up for other coverage, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Huffington Post
May 28, 2020
Roughly 350 foreign workers were certified for meat and poultry gigs in 2019, according to Daniel Costa at the Economic Policy Institute. Such H-2B visa holders, capped at 66,000 annually, are commonly used in landscaping and resorts.
AP News
May 28, 2020
Together, more than a 1 million immigrants annually collectively receive those visas — about 70 percent of all guest workers in the United States, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The issue has been on Miller’s agenda for years. As a Capitol Hill staffer, he helped draft a bill that targeted the visas for students and cultural exchange workers, which according to the Economic Policy Institute statistics, now equal about 450,000 people, or 27 percent of the total number of guest workers each year.
Politico
May 28, 2020
“The H-1B is an important pathway to bring skilled people here,” Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, said. “But I do think that the way it’s used is one big corporate loophole. We should regulate it in a way that’s fair to both the US workers who should have a shot at applying and then the migrant workers who are coming in through no fault of their own, being underpaid and used as pawns.”
VOX
May 28, 2020
Secondly, this opinion that the $600 supplement is somehow damaging to business undermines what various nonpartisan think tanks such as the Brookings Institute and the Economic Policy Institute agree on wholeheartedly – that this admittedly imperfect additional supplement is actually the most functional aspect of the CARES ACT that has kept the ravaged economy limping along through the worst of this crisis.
Cranston Herald
May 27, 2020
“All recessions exacerbate existing inequalities by race and ethnicity—and always hit black and [Latinx] workers harder—but this one will be worse,” Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, told The Washington Post at the time. “It will be an absolute nightmare.”
Nonprofit Quarterly
May 27, 2020
What proponents of the Heroes Act say: Since the middle of March, more than 38 million US workers who have lost their jobs have filed for unemployment. The actual number of those unemployed could be millions higher, according to the Economic Policy Institute, because many people who are eligible were unable to file a jobless claim. With the job losses, the nation’s unemployment rate reached 17.2% (PDF), according to the US Department of Labor. Newly unemployed people, along with others taking an economic hit from the pandemic, would benefit from having more money to spend right now.
CNET
May 27, 2020