More than 50 percent of Americans receive their health insurance through their employer; a recent analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute forecast that 3.5 million workers had lost their insurance in the last two weeks of March alone.
Fox Business
May 6, 2020
By the numbers: States have processed unemployment claims for roughly one in five working Americans — some 30.3 million people — in just 6 weeks.
- And yet the Economic Policy Institute estimates as many as 13.9 million more Americans out of work since mid-March have been unable to get unemployment benefits because “long-neglected state [unemployment] systems are unable to handle the volume of applications.”
Axios
May 6, 2020
But he tossed all that aside. Trump’s massive corporate tax cuts were a boon to the rich and did little for workers. He badly undermined worker protections and tried to roll back the Affordable Care Act’s protections for millions. Trump and Republicans are still trying to destroy those protections amid a pandemic.
The Washington Post
May 6, 2020
Life in the U.S. today can feel dark. Sure, we can’t predict the future, but the country has found itself in a similar position before. And, while history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, there are things we could learn from the trials of the nation, just under a century ago, when tens of millions were out of work.
To unpack these questions and more, we spoke with Elise Gould, senior economist from the Economic Policy Institute, and Rebecca Dixon, the executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
NPR
May 6, 2020
In this video, we explain how and why the UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands chose a different path. With the help of economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, we explore whether the US can still avoid millions more job losses.
VOX
May 6, 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.
Daily Kos
May 6, 2020
Dr. Chris Beyrer, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, added that “occupational exposure” is expected to present higher risks for African Americans and Latinos as states move ahead with reopening. Only 16 percent of Latinos and 20 percent of African Americans are able to work from home, compared with 30 percent of white Americans, according to an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute.
Politico
May 6, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute estimates 12.7 million Americans have lost their health insurance since the COVID-19 crisis began. Of the 1.6 million jobs lost in Florida over that span, 687,286 were jobs that provided health coverage, according to EPI data, some 43 percent of the total.
TC Palm
May 6, 2020