A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) states that racial and economic inequality have made Black workers, who comprise about 12 percent of the workforce, most vulnerable to the coronavirus. As of April, less than half of the adult Black population was employed. Many of those African Americans who were working are part of the army of low-paid essential workers, risking their lives for a paycheck. (Black women and Latinas are the backbone of this army.) And they are more likely to be uninsured, so they do not get medical care until they fall severely ill.
The Center for Public Integrity
June 5, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, said the upswing was likely due to most states lifting stay-at-home orders.
“While these are welcome gains (as long as the health consequences aren’t offsetting), jobs losses since February still total 19.6 million, and are currently 13% below its February level,” she wrote. (Parentheses in original.)
She cautioned that the “economic pain will be long-standing” without further relief to workers, families and state and local governments.
“Even with the mild improvement in May, the unemployment rate of all groups is still higher than the highest level the overall unemployment rate hit at the height of the Great Recession, when it reached 10.0% in 2009,” Gould said.
Courthouse News Service
June 5, 2020
The exact number is likely a little harder to get at. The Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz calculated that 37.2 million workers are either actually on unemployment benefits or applied very recently. That figure is based on the number of people DOL reported who are seeking another week of claims (and thus made it through the first round of processing) and also counts workers seeking aid under the temporary Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which includes people not typically eligible for unemployment benefits, like gig workers. “Together, that is close to one in four people in the U.S. workforce,” Shierholz writes.
Politico
June 5, 2020
Current CDC recommendations to decrease the risks of contracting coronavirus are to stay home and practice social distancing. However, not everyone has the privilege to abide by those guidelines. A report by the Economic Policy Institute based on federal labor data shows Black and Hispanic workers are less likely to be able to work from home.
Beyond Type 1
June 5, 2020
TODAY’S EDUCATION JOB LOSSES ECLIPSE THOSE DURING THE GREAT RECESSION, Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute concluded in a new blog post that lays out some troubling numbers for schools.
— “More K–12 public education jobs were lost in April than in all of the Great Recession,” she wrote. “And that’s before any austerity measures from lost state and local revenue have been put in place.”
— Half of the job losses in K–12 public education between March and April were among special education teachers, tutors and teaching assistants, Gould said. Other significant job losses occurred among counselors, nurses, janitors, and other building maintenance workers.
— Looking ahead: “April’s job losses are huge in and of themselves, but it’s an even bigger problem that additional public education job losses have probably already occurred — we will find out more details when the May jobs data comes out this Friday,” Gould wrote.
Politico
June 5, 2020
If there isn’t more federal aid in the coming weeks and months, the United States could be headed for a prolonged depression due to the COVID-19 crisis. Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, says almost all the forecasts for the next 18 months show unemployment would remain over 10% by the end of 2021.
KIRO Radio
June 5, 2020
At 20.8%, the black poverty rate is 2.5 times the white rate. The wealth gap between blacks and whites has also worsened. In 2016 the net worth of white families, at $171,000, was almost 10 times greater than that of the typical black household. The Economic Policy Institute reports that between 2000 and 2018 the gap between black and white incomes worsened at every level.
The Wall Street Journal
June 5, 2020
An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 people in tech are working on H-1B visas, said Daniel Costa, a director at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Highly skilled immigrants, hailing from dozens of countries and in particular India and China, can use the visas to stay in the country for six years.
The Information
June 5, 2020
Even without a global pandemic, J-1 visitors can have a hard time finding help, said Daniel Costa of the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of a 2019 report on a J-1 summer work-and-travel program for college students.
ProPublica
June 5, 2020
The economic fallout from the pandemic has exacerbated inequalities in the U.S. Minority groups such as black Americans are among the most exposed to unemployment through mass layoffs in the hospitality and manufacturing industries, according to the Economic Policy Institute. They are also overrepresented in front-line jobs where exposure to infection is high, and tend to live in denser, multi-generation communities where the spread of the coronavirus has been fiercer, according to EPI. Underlying health and economic conditions all contribute to increased vulnerability during the pandemic. Black Americans make up just over 12% of the U.S. population but account for 22.4% of Covid-19 deaths, EPI said.
The Wall Street Journal
June 5, 2020