“The usual relationship that we see between the national unemployment rate and the black unemployment rate is typically really close to a two to one,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.
“Whatever is being projected for the national unemployment rate, in most instances, we expect to see something close to twice that for black Americans.”
The Miami Times
May 20, 2020
As budgets get damaged by sharp cuts in tax revenues and increases in costs, governments need to deal with major issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic and to erosion in the economy as a result of the virus. Just on Tuesday, chief economist Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute indicated in a new report that suggests “a prolonged depression is guaranteed without significant federal aid to state and local governments.”
Bond Buyer
May 20, 2020
Coronavirus, Farmworkers and America’s Food Supply
Organized By: The Indicator; Planet Money
What It Is About: Daniel Costa, the director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute talks about what coronavirus means for the nation’s farmworkers and our food supply.
Length: 9 minutes
Air Date: May 13, 2020
Where To Listen: Here
NYCFoodPolicy
May 20, 2020
“The reason we all work at nonprofits is because we support the mission of the nonprofits,” says Kayla Blado, who works at the Economic Policy Institute. It makes sense. Like many fields that involve doing something good for the world, nonprofit work tends to come with low pay and long hours. But now, more than ever before, it comes with something else: a union drive. The nonprofit union wave is rising right along with the intensity of the crises that nonprofits are dealing with in our bad, bad world.
In These Times
May 20, 2020
Lawrence Michel, past president of the Economic Policy Institute, said Biden’s labor agenda was “beyond my hopes,” adding he could not recall a Democratic nominee in his lifetime who presented “as robust and fleshed out a policy suite on labor standards and unions.”
People's Weekly World
May 20, 2020
Richard Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank in Washington. Much of his work has focused on the effect of government policies in segregation. Rothstein argues in his 2017 book The Color of Law that enduring segregation isn’t “de facto,” meaning effective, if not legally codified. Instead, it’s largely been “de jure,” a result of government policies.
“With public housing, federal and local government increased African Americans’ isolation in urban ghettos,” he wrote. “And with mortgage guarantees, the government subsidized whites to abandon urban areas for suburbs. The combination contributed heavily to creation of the segregated neighborhoods and schools we know today.”
Triad City Beat
May 20, 2020
According to an August report by the Economic Policy Institute, “CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills.
“This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1% and top 0.1% incomes,” the institute’s report says, “leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%.
“The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less, or taxed more,” the report said.
Winston-Salem Journal
May 20, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute, black women make $0.61 for every dollar that white males make. The awareness of the wage gap alone is enough to chip away at the most ambitious of employees, that compounded with daily jabs like this can leave even the most decorated of prize fighters feeling defeated in the white-washed cage of the capitalism known as America.
Medium
May 20, 2020
“State and local governments are currently forecast to be facing revenue shortfalls as large as $1 trillion over the coming years,” Bivens wrote at the Economic Policy Institute blog. “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.”
Common Dreams
May 20, 2020