Media clips
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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
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
These numbers are a serious underestimation. The Economic Policy Institute reported that it found that for every 100 workers able to successfully apply for unemployment benefits, there are another 37 that had tried to file but could not get through the system.
World Socialist Web Site May 8, 2020 -
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 -
Daniel Costa and Ron Hira have released a new report for the Economic Policy Institute: H-1B visas and prevailing wage levels.
Here are key takeaways the two authors identify:
- DOL lets H-1B employers undercut local wages. Sixty percent of H-1B positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor are assigned wage levels well below the local median wage for the occupation. While H-1B program rules allow this, DOL has the authority to change it—but hasn’t.
- A small number of employers dominate the program. While over 53,000 employers used the H-1B program in 2019, the top 30 H-1B employers accounted for more than one in four of all 389,000 H-1B petitions approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2019.
- Outsourcing firms make heavy use of the H-1B program. Half of the top 30 H-1B employers use an outsourcing business model to provide staff for third-party clients, rather than employing H-1B workers directly to fill a special need at the company that applies for the visa.
- Major U.S. firms use the H-1B program to pay low wages. Among the top 30 H-1B employers are major U.S. firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Google, Apple, and Facebook. All of them take advantage of program rules in order to legally pay many of their H-1B workers below the local median wage for the jobs they fill.
ImmigrationProf Blog May 8, 2020 -
What do the latest unemployment rates mean for the U.S. economy? NPR’s Noel King speaks with Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and Claudia Goldin of Harvard University.
NPR May 8, 2020