One indicator that racial discrimination increased over the last four decades is that average hourly wage growth of black men and women lagged behind the wage growth of non-Hispanic white men and women. In an influential Economic Policy Institute paper, Valerie Wilson and William Rodgers found a 9 percentage point decline in the relative earnings of black men and a 14 percentage point decline among black women between 1979 and 2015. The widening disparity suggests that the civil rights movement did not crystallize its gains from the 1960s and structural racism resulted in lower earnings. But using a different earnings measure – median annual earnings of full-time/full-year workers (FTFY) – and adjusting for intensity of labor force attachment over a 15-year period – leads us to a more nuanced assessment that can help us understand what factors are driving the earnings gap.
Economics 21
May 26, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute’s newly published domestic workers chartbook provides a comprehensive look at who those workers are. In 2019, roughly 350,000 of them were house cleaners. About 225,000 of them were nannies, while 275,000 provided childcare in their own homes, whether to their own children or others’. The majority of domestic workers are home health aides, over a million of whom work through agencies, while an additional 150,000 work independently. Of these, the most likely to have any workplace protections are home health aides contracted through an agency, and that’s far from a guarantee.
Jacobin
May 26, 2020
Yet making the decision to quit your job or reduce your hours, even temporarily, has long-term economic repercussions: American parents forgo tens of billions in lost income every year when they drop out of the workforce or reduce their hours to care for their kids, according to a report published earlier this year from the progressive think tank Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
May 26, 2020
Young European workers, who have staffed many U.S. resorts, are staying home. Visa processing for U.S. work and travel visas at consulates abroad has basically shut down everywhere, except for farmworkers, according to Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research for the Economic Policy Institute.
Bloomberg
May 26, 2020
Though some states have laws making employers provide paid sick and family leave, FFCRA is the first-ever federal mandate. However, it leaves out a large portion of the workforce — the law doesn’t cover about 6.8 million workers at large firms who don’t get paid leave, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of DOL data.
Law360
May 26, 2020
The Trump administration has rhetorically followed this perspective (see U.S. trade rep Robert Lighthizer declaring that the era of offshoring is over), and in some cases acting, signing a four-year agreement to source a generic pharmaceutical producer stateside. But more can be done, as the Economic Policy Institute outlines: ending the gaming of Buy America, for example, or leveraging federal contracts, or addressing currency manipulation, or reversing tax incentives for offshoring.
The American Prospect
May 26, 2020
The Trump administration has rhetorically followed this perspective (see U.S. trade rep Robert Lighthizer declaring that the era of offshoring is over), and in some cases acting, signing a four-year agreement to source a generic pharmaceutical producer stateside. But more can be done, as the Economic Policy Institute outlines: ending the gaming of Buy America, for example, or leveraging federal contracts, or addressing currency manipulation, or reversing tax incentives for offshoring.
The American Prospect
May 26, 2020
The workers faring best during the pandemic are those with high wages, access to healthcare, paid sick leave and the ability to work from home. But those benefits are exceedingly rare for much of the workforce, says Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented think tank. The coronavirus crisis has “uncovered the weakness in our social safety net,” she says. More than 40% of workers are employed in low-wage jobs and some 28 million non-elderly adults lack health insurance. Moreover, federal data suggests only about 30% of workers have the ability to work from home—and the rate is even lower for black and Latino workers.
In These Times
May 22, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified economic hardship in our community. Even prior to the health crisis and perhaps more today, the U.S. Economic Policy Institute named Teton County Idaho and Wyoming as the region with the largest economic inequality in the nation. With rising costs of living and over 40 percent of Teton County, Idaho working households living with less than the necessary income required to fund the five basic household necessities (housing, child care, food, transportation and health care), our local Extension office and Master Gardeners are working with nonprofit partners to tackle the issue of food access and hunger.
Teton Valley News
May 22, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute predicted in March that by summer, almost three million jobs would be wiped out from the U.S. economy. By May, though, CNN reported that over 20 million American jobs were lost in April alone.
The Oracle
May 22, 2020