Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute noted in a blog post last week that more than one in five U.S. workers are currently either receiving unemployment benefits or waiting for approval. Shierholz said “policymakers need to do more” to provide people with financial relief as the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic continues.
To that end, Shierholz urged Congress to extend the $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits provided under the CARES Act, which is set to expire on July 31.
“We also must provide more funding to state [unemployment insurance] agencies to hire staff to speed up processing and to make improvements to websites and other administrative infrastructure,” wrote Shierholz.
Common Dreams
June 4, 2020
STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE: Valerie Wilson directs the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the Economic Policy Institute. Valerie points out that black Americans are dying at 2 1/2 times the rate of white Americans. Part of the reason for that, she says, is because of jobs.
NPR
June 4, 2020
The housing conditions for black Americans also leave them more exposed to contracting coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Only 54.5% of African-American households live in single-family homes, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute, compared with 74.5% of white households.
Realtor
June 4, 2020
Black workers are facing greater health and economic difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study done by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Elise Gould, senior economist at EPI, joined Yahoo Finance to discuss how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected black communities and people of color.
“What we’re seeing is that there are underlying health and economic conditions that have magnified the problems for African American workers and their families in this country,” she said.
“Black workers are often, when they’re compared to white workers, are least able to weather the storm because they don’t have the same kind of safety net that some other workers have. They’ve suffered higher unemployment rates for a lot longer.”
Yahoo Finance
June 4, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department, suggested that more government aid will be necessary to keep consumers and businesses afloat so that many laid-off workers will have jobs to return to.
“Those jobs are not going to come back if the federal government doesn’t do the things it needs to do to stimulate the economy, so that the demand and confidence is going to be there, so that those businesses will need to call workers back,” Shierholz said.
AP News
June 4, 2020
When the Economic Policy Institute looked at the effects of the Great Recession of 2008, it found that between 2005 and 2009, the median net worth of black households plummeted down 53%. For white households, on the other hand, the median net worth only declined by 17%.
Forbes
June 4, 2020
They argue the pandemic inordinately affects both the health and paychecks of African Americans, who have suffered record job losses in recent months, according to new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute think tank.
Those who have kept their jobs are often in positions that make them vulnerable to the virus, it found.
Reuters
June 4, 2020
We’ll have gained more, in fact, than if 2.5 percent of U.S GDP were invested in the energy transition during the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, which ended abruptly in March. Back then, building out clean energy infrastructure would have meant pulling workers from one line of work to another, or “job shifting,” says Josh Bivens, director of research for the Economic Policy Institute. And that would have been fine, “but you’d only be solving the one problem,” which is climate change. “Now you’d solve that problem and create a bunch of jobs for people who actually need them because they’re unemployed.”
And don’t fear debt or deficits, Bivens says. Even in a strong economy, government borrowing “puts upward pressure on interest rates,” which makes private investment more expensive, crowding out investors who would build inefficient office parks or back conventional energy production. “And that’s actually the whole point,” Bivens says. “One reason why the climate situation is so grim is that we’re bequeathing into the future this conventional capital stock” – coal plants, drafty buildings, oil production – “that is way too dirty. We want to crowd that out with green capital, and that’s exactly what deficit-financed green public investments would do.”
Capital and Main
June 4, 2020