Media clips

• Economists forecast 16% unemployment and a record 21 million payroll cuts for April jobs report

  “If we measure the strength of the labor market as the share of the population with a job, we do not have to be concerned with most of the measurement issues associated with the unemployment rate, specifically whether would-be workers are actively looking for employment or not and therefore counted amongst the ranks of the unemployed,” said Elise Gould, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  Business Insider May 8, 2020
• Direct Relief Demanded for Hard-Hit US Families as Depression-Level Unemployment Tops 33 Million

  According to the department, the unemployment rate in the U.S. is now 15.5%, but some economists, including Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), say that 20% of workers may actually be out of a job, with possibly 20% of workers out of a job but yet to file for unemployment.

  “If all the workers who filed for unemployment insurance up to and including the reference week (April 12-18 in the claims data) were counted in the measured unemployment numbers, the unemployment rate could hit 18% in the latest jobs day release,” wrote Gould, a senior economist at EPI.

  “Of course,” she added, “this fails to count the workers who were unable to file or lost their jobs and were ineligible for unemployment insurance. The CARES Act provisions that greatly expanded eligibility for unemployment insurance were only operational in most states in the last couple of weeks. Taken together, this could suggest an unemployment rate in excess of 20%, levels last seen in the Great Depression.”

  Many workers who stop working as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic may never be counted as unemployed, wrote Gould’s colleague, EPI policy director Heidi Shierholz.

  These workers “will be counted as dropping out of the labor force instead of as unemployed because they are unable to search for work due to the lockdown, or because they are not available to work because they are, for example, caring for children whose school has closed,” Shierholz wrote. 

  Common Dreams May 8, 2020
• Trump says administration will continue legal fight to eliminate Obamacare as states brace for Medicaid cuts

  With unprecedented unemployment claims, nearly 13 million people have likely lost their employed-provided plans since the onset of the outbreak, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

  The Independent May 8, 2020
• It’s time for dads like me to step up
  It’s too soon to tell how the repercussions of this pandemic and economic crisis will play out across America, but we know that the hazards will not be felt equally. The threats to the economic status of women in the wake of Covid-19 are many and varied. The Economic Policy Institute, for example, has released preliminary analysis of unemployment data that shows disproportionate numbers of women are losing their jobs. A number of the threats relate not to macroeconomic forces and structural bias in the workforce, but rather to the microeconomies and relationships within a single family. There’s reason to be concerned about a potential rise in domestic violence, but even the happiest of partnerships may result in unequal sharing of the psychological and career-related risks of this shutdown.
  CNN May 8, 2020
• No Income. Major Medical Bills. What Life Is Like for Millions of Americans Facing Financial Ruin Because of the Pandemic

  The safety net—already a dubious -patchwork—grows more tattered. In normal times, not quite a third of workers who have lost jobs receive jobless benefits. In April and May, thousands waited weeks to get through to unemployment offices, sometimes only to be told they weren’t eligible. Then there is the added expense of health care. About 12.7 million Americans have likely lost employer–provided health insurance since the pandemic began, according to the Economic Policy Institute, adding to the 27.5 million who didn’t have it before this crisis.

  Time May 8, 2020
• Harnessing the Virus Debt for Economic Growth

  With stay-in-place laws and mandatory closing of most businesses, unemployment has skyrocketed. Before the pandemic it was at 3.5 percent in December 20, as of April 2020, the Economic Policy Institute has estimated that unemployment rate to be at 18.3 percent. Many economists using April’s Labor Department data predict that the unemployment rate could reach 25 percent this summer if the existing practices remain in force. That level would match the peak of the Great Depression in 1933. However, then it took three years not six months to reach that level.

  Counterpunch May 8, 2020
• Socialist Policies Could Have Helped the United States During the Coronavirus Pandemic

  Indeed, the $1,200 checks being distributed (if slowly) can be seen as a sort of basic income, though a real UBI would be regular, rather than a one-off, and would, as sociologist Peter Frase noted in Jacobin, be enough to live on — as a one-time $1,200 check certainly is not. But just giving people money has the benefit, as Barb Jacobson of the Basic Income U.K. network argues, of having funds readily available in a crisis, as well as allowing people to decide what they need and how to spend it. Means testing or other qualified relief systems — like the current unemployment insurance system, for example — is much more cumbersome, meaning that many of the newly laid-off right now are having a hard time accessing benefits or even getting through to the system that allows them to apply. An additional 7.8 to 12.2 million people, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, could have applied for unemployment payments if the system wasn’t such a mess.

  Teen Vogue May 8, 2020
• Power Up: Black and Hispanic Americans are getting laid off at higher rates than white workers.

  Even more bad news may be coming. Tomorrow, the Labor Department will release the first jobs report tcovering an entire month of shutdowns. If the unemployment rate rises to 16 percent on Friday and historic ratios hold, the gaps for communities of color will be enormous, Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute and the chief economist to the labor secretary during the Obama administration told our colleagues.

  • Just how bad it will get: “ … the black unemployment rate, which is typically double that of whites, can be expected to reach nearly 30 percent, Shierholz said; the Hispanic unemployment rate can be expected to hit 20 percent,” per Tracy and Scott.
  The Washington Post May 8, 2020
• GOP leaders plan big budget cuts, don’t say if they’ve asked D.C. for help

  And Michigan is far from alone, as states all over the country are grappling with soaring unemployment, plummeting tax revenue and a looming recession. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) pegs the budget hole for state and local governments at $500 billion through 2021.

  “Given balanced budget requirements for state and local governments, this revenue collapse will translate in coming months into extreme pressure to reduce spending,” write EPI’s Celine McNicholas, Josh Bivens and Heidi Shierholz. “This spending cutback will weigh heavily on recovery, just as public health restrictions are hopefully lifted — and we should be hoping for as rapid a bounceback as possible.”

  Michigan Advance May 8, 2020
• Post-Recession Job Growth Wiped Out

  Heidi Schierholz, former Chief Economist at the US Department of Labor and Senior Economist and Policy Director with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said, “For comparison, in the period before the coronavirus hit, just over a million workers would apply for UI in a typical five-week span, and in the worst five-week stretch of the Great Recession, it was less than four million. In the last five weeks, it was more than 24 million.”

  Urban Milwaukee May 8, 2020