Since college-educated workers are more likely to be able to work remotely than people without a college education, people without degrees risk being exposed to the disease on the job, or are forced to choose between their health and a paycheck in some cases. And because fewer than 1 in 5 black workers and 1 in 6 Hispanic workers are able to work remotely, according to the Economic Policy Institute, on-the-job exposure disproportionately affects people of color.
ABC News
May 11, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, published an analysis of the latest economic data in a Thursday blog post, a day before the Department of Labor’s release of the much anticipated April jobs report.
Newsweek
May 11, 2020
Many Latinos have lost jobs as the coronavirus forced businesses to shutter. Just 16 percent of Latinos were in jobs that allowed them to work from home, compared to 31.4 percent of non-Latinos, according to an Economic Policy Institute study released in March, about the time when states were beginning to restrict larger gatherings of people and close nonessential businesses.
NBC News
May 11, 2020
A separate analysis released Friday by the Economic Policy Institute reached a similar conclusion.
Lexington Herald-Leader
May 11, 2020
Heidi Shirholz economista del Economic Policy Institute explicaba en la edición del jueves del Washington Post que todas las recesiones “amplían las desigualdades existentes por raza y etnia, y siempre golpean a los trabajadores negros y latinos a con más dureza, pero esta va a ser peor. Va a ser una pesadilla”.
El Diario
May 11, 2020
Average hourly earnings spiked by $1.34 to $30.01, but this shouldn’t be interpreted as a silver lining, warned Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould. “While workers across the economy lost their jobs in April, many of the job losses were concentrated in lower-wage jobs. Therefore, stronger wage growth in April reflects the dropping of lower-wage jobs from the total,” she said.
NBC News
May 11, 2020
“There is so much uncertainty about how things will unfold that an arbitrary end date doesn’t make any sense at all right now,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief Labor Department economist now at the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “Lawmakers must be willing to provide fiscal support until the unemployment rate is at a manageable level.”
The New York Times
May 11, 2020
“The industries that are most subject to these sways are lower wage jobs,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
With so many people out of work, the prospect of finding a good-paying job isn’t straightforward. “It’s not like the safer, more recession-proof jobs pay less,” Gould said. “They’re already the jobs that were in higher demand before all of this happened.”
MarketWatch
May 11, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute and state data, Connecticut’s unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2019 averaged 3.8 percent. For non-Hispanic whites it was 2.7 percent and for the state’s Latinos it was 5.8 percent, putting Connecticut among those with the highest rate of Hispanic unemployment behind Pennsylvania, Arizona and Washington state.
Nationally, African-American workers had the highest unemployment rate 5.7%, followed by Hispanic workers at 4.1%, white workers (at 3%), and Asian workers (at 2.7%), EPI said.
The CT Mirror
May 11, 2020