For families of color in the U.S., there’s also more chance that household members can’t work from home as federal guidelines suggest. Fewer than 20% of black workers can telework, according to a March study by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute.
Progressive Farmer
May 11, 2020
Counting them as unemployed would push the rate up higher to 24%, according to calculations by Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
The Advocate
May 11, 2020
As many as 14 million Americans who could qualify for some type of unemployment compensation are not receiving assistance, according to a survey published April 28 by the Economic Policy Institute.
Black Hills Pioneer
May 11, 2020
“It’s starting to seem like the new normal,” said Julia Wolfe, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “But I think it’s important to ground ourselves in that this is still a huge shock to a lot of workers and their families and also represents a huge strain on the unemployment insurance system.”
Tucson Sentinel
May 11, 2020
However, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that figure is far lower than the true number of Americans out of work. Nearly 14 million additional people could have filed if unemployment processes were easier, EPI calculates.
The Daily Chronicle
May 11, 2020
As grave as this is, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic may have prevented 30 percent to 40 percent of qualified applicants from claiming unemployment benefits. In addition, EPI analysts calculate that since March 15, between 8.9 million and 13.9 million people who could have filed for unemployment didn’t.
Noozhawk
May 11, 2020
We have innovation, but also, people like their employer-sponsored health insurance. It’s, like, well, now we have twenty million people who don’t have that anymore. [By mid-April, twenty million Americans lost their jobs, and an estimate by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that roughly nine million Americans lost their employer-provided health insurance.] I think all those critiques were compelling to me. There was a certain portion of the Sanders folks who, I think, thought that, if they were able to win a narrow factional battle, they could essentially seize the palace, and that’s not how it works. They just didn’t convince enough people, and sometimes it felt like they were not trying.
The New Yorker
May 11, 2020
Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute wrote that the extra $600 “has been by far the most effective part our economic policy response to the coronavirus shock.” It would have been better to cap the benefit at 100% of pre-crisis wages “up to a quite generous maximum benefit,” but “decades of disinvestment in the administrative capacity” of state unemployment offices left them incapable of calculating a flexible amount with a 100% replacement rate.
SF Gate
May 11, 2020
“Money spent on continuing crucial unemployment insurance provisions will help avoid a prolonged period of high unemployment that will do far more serious and persistent damage to the economy,” wrote economic research director Josh Bivens and policy director Heidi Shierholz of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in a Monday post.
The Hill
May 11, 2020