“People have internalized the idea of not panic selling,” Economic Policy Institute economist Monique Morrissey said of the prevailing stick-with-it attitude.
Bloomberg
May 12, 2020
Daniel Costa, who directs immigration law and policy research for the Economic Policy Institute, said he’s optimistic that farmworkers who become sick with COVID-19 will be able to benefit from paid sick leave, even if they are undocumented.
“I don’t think that employers want sick workers who have coronavirus or might have it showing up to the fields and getting other workers sick,” said Costa, who is based in the Central Valley city of Turlock. “That could shut down their operations. I think there’s a real incentive there.”
Costa said that as long as employees are on the books, regardless of their immigration status, they should qualify for paid sick days.
KQED
May 12, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the nonprofit think tank Economic Policy Institute, said payroll employment “dropped like a rock in April.”
“I struggle to even put into words how large this drop is,” she said. “Total job losses over the last two months would fill all 30 currently empty Major League Baseball stadiums 16 times over.”
“It’s as if all the jobs in all of the states beginning with the letter ‘M’ simply disappeared in the last month,” Gould said. “That’s all the jobs in Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana combined.”
Courthouse News Service
May 12, 2020
o You can say a whole lot about this jobs report: a “portrait of devastation,” a “waking nightmare,” an “epidemic of hardship and hunger.” What you haven’t quite heard it described as, despite it being true: a process Congress wanted to happen.
The American Prospect
May 12, 2020
This is a larger estimate than a recent study conducted by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) that states that only 16.2 percent of Hispanic workers can work remotely.
The Hill
May 12, 2020
The leisure and hospitality industry was the hardest hit, but other sectors, such as education and health care, also suffered significant losses. Female workers suffered a larger share of job losses in the COVID-19 labor market, according to Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. In April, women suffered 54.9% of total job losses.
Karm Impact
May 11, 2020
An analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Economic Policy Institute found that only 16% of Latinos and 20% of African Americans are able to work from home, and often are working in jobs where social distancing is not possible.
The Baltimore Sun
May 11, 2020
That was “the one point of light” in an otherwise “grim, shockingly bad” report from the Labor Department, said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department.
“If people are on furlough that’s better for them because then they don’t suffer the real economic trauma of losing a job,” she said. “When the lockdown is over, they’ll be able to get right back to work. That’s good for the business, it’s good for the worker, good for the economy.”
Marketplace
May 11, 2020
“We are in such uncharted territory, but the recovery will be slower for black and Hispanic communities who are getting hit disproportionately hard,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
May 11, 2020
Health concerns make up one side of the Covid-19 coin while economic decline constructs the other. Economic researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, predict that the economic effects of Covid-19 will lead us to something much deeper than the Great Recession. The Economic Policy Institute predicts a 15 percent unemployment rate by July 2020, and as the Black unemployment rate is usually double the white unemployment rate, this means that Black communities are looking at unemployment rates of at least 25 percent.
Inequality.org
May 11, 2020