“It’s starting to seem like the new normal,” said Julia Wolfe, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “But I think it’s important to ground ourselves in that this is still a huge shock to a lot of workers and their families and also represents a huge strain on the unemployment insurance system.”
Cronkite News
May 5, 2020
Nevada’s job market has so far been one of the hardest hit in the country. And according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, the state now has 25% of its workforce unemployed.
KUNR
May 5, 2020
“Congress has the power to protect ordinary workers during this public health and economic crisis,” Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said.
Nation of Change
May 5, 2020
“All else equal, job loss of the magnitude reflected in the UI claims of the last six weeks would translate into an unemployment rate of 20.5 [percent],” the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz wrote in reaction to the figure. But, she notes, “in good times and bad,” the white unemployment rate is about 0.9 times the overall unemployment rate, while the black unemployment rate tends to be 1.8 times the overall unemployment rate. “That means that an overall unemployment rate of 20.5 [percent] would translate into a white unemployment rate of 18.4 [percent] and a black unemployment rate of 36.8 [percent],” she writes.
Politico
May 5, 2020
The most recent estimates, offered by both the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, project a shortfall for the states alone of about $500 billion from now through June 2021, with localities losing an additional $250 billion. Even those numbers are based on projections of unemployment levels that increasingly look far too optimistic. With more than 30 million already filing for unemployment, we are nearing the record for joblessness set in the Great Depression. James Knightley, chief economist of ING, notes that by the end of May, fewer than one in two working-age Americans will be drawing a paycheck. If McConnell were to block aid to the states and localities, wholesale layoffs of teachers, police, public hospital staff, and caregivers for the poor and vulnerable would add hundreds of thousands to the number of unemployed.
The Nation
May 5, 2020
Teacher shortages are a more severe problem in high-poverty areas with lower pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Spartan Newsroom
May 5, 2020
The Check’s in The Mail: I thought it was pretty sad over the past few weeks when news started to trickle out that big companies were taking loans intended, in spirit and practice, for small businesses. But, then, this week came along. The Economic Policy Institute came out with the following conclusion based on a March/April national survey: Only about half of the “potential” unemployment insurance applicants “are actually receiving benefits,” concluded EPI, a left of center think tank. There are a lot of reasons for this: like overwhelmed state unemployment systems. In addition, some states like Florida (shocker) have made it more difficult to draw benefits over the years, according to The New York Times. In other unemployment news, some state officials are already worried that the jobless won’t return to work fast enough—and may strike back. The Washington Post reports that states like Oklahoma and Iowa are threatening to strip benefits from workers who are afraid to return to potentially unsafe jobs. “If there is a claimant out there that says ‘you know what, I can make more money sitting at home,’ ” one Oklahoma government big was quoted in the Post. “then, if the employer will contact us, that’s a refusal of civil work and we’ll cut off their benefits.” Nice. Thank goodness farm state officials are fighting for our right to eat pork chops.
Newsweek
May 5, 2020
1. You may regret staying home later
If you do choose to sit tight at home until July, you won’t be the only one hitting the job market this summer. The Economic Policy Institute predicts a nationwide unemployment rate of 15.6% in July of this year. To put that in perspective, the highest unemployment rate experienced during the Great Recession was 10% in October 2009.
The Motley Fool
May 5, 2020
A recent analysis by Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that, from March 15 to April 18, between 8.9 million and 13.9 million more people would have filed for unemployment benefits had the application process been easier.
The Washington Post
May 5, 2020