“It seems to be a pretty clear loophole,” says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
As a means of financial assistance while their children are at school, many parents listed their college-age kids as dependents because of a $2,000 tax break. “There’s obviously no reason why a college student shouldn’t be considered dependent, especially if they are dependent on their parents, for tax purposes,” says Gould. “It seems pretty arbitrary. “And as far as I understand it, the classification is contingent on your being [marked as] ‘dependent’ on your parents’ tax form.”
Fast Company
May 5, 2020
President Donald Trump’s Department of Labor cheats many millions of American graduates by allowing employers to import foreign contract workers at below-market wages, says a May 4 report by the Economic Policy Institute.
“DOL lets H-1B employers undercut local wages,” said the report, titled “H-1B visas and prevailing wage levels.” The report continues:
Breitbart
May 5, 2020
The teacher shortage is also worse in higher-poverty schools, where there is a shortage of qualified teachers. An Economic Policy Institute report finds 66.2% of teachers in high-poverty schools have an educational background in the subject of their main assignment, compared to 72.5% of those in low-poverty schools.
Education Dive
May 5, 2020
Claiming none of the six stories is an outlier, it cites an Economic Policy Institute study that finds half of American families in the 56-to-61 age bracket had less than $21,000 in retirement savings in 2016.
“The system that was supposed to provide for them is shot through with holes,” the Post hyperbolically writes.
It leaves out that EPI is a left-leaning think tank and major labor advocate for shared prosperity (notice the buzzword) which routinely criticizes the demise of the defined benefit system.
401K Specialist
May 5, 2020
More than 12.7 million people may have lost health insurance through job layoffs and furloughs, according to analysis from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
That figure represents 45% of the total national job layoffs and furloughs, which the EPI estimated at 28 million, based on unemployment claims data. The health insurance figure was up from the EPI’s previous estimate of 9.2 million on April 16, resulting in 3.5 million more insurance losses in a two-week timeframe.
Fast Company
May 5, 2020
— H-1B under the microscope: The Economic Policy Institute says at least a dozen tech heavyweights including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are exploiting the H-1B visa program to underpay skilled workers.
Politico
May 5, 2020
About 28 million Americans have been laid off or furloughed since early March due to COVID-19, and it’s likely 12.7 million lost health insurance through their employer as a result, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
To come to this conclusion, research economists with the institute analyzed data from state-level unemployment insurance claims from the U.S. Department of Labor. The economists explained their methodology in a separate blog post.
Becker's Payer Issues
May 1, 2020
Ben Zipperer is an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, and co-author of the new report ‘Unemployment filing failures’
94.1 KPFA
May 1, 2020
Wash your hands. Work from home. Avoid congregating with others. Wear a facemask. The hyper-individualistic guidelines rolled out to halt COVID-19 and flatten the curve precisely represent the inequities built into our public health system. By focusing exclusively on the behaviors of individuals, policymakers overlook how the employment circumstances of Black and Latinx people force them to choose between social distancing or paying their rent. Only 19.7% of Black workers and 16.2% of Latinx workers work from home compared to 29.9% of White workers and 37% of Asian workers, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. Those with limited financial resources and access to transportation also cannot stock up food for weeks at a time.
Chicago Reporter
May 1, 2020
For every 10 workers who successfully filed for unemployment benefits, as many as six additional workers either tried to apply but couldn’t get through the system or didn’t try because the process was too difficult, according to Economic Policy Institute research released Tuesday.
Some 21.5 million workers filed for unemployment benefits between March 22 and April 18. The difficulties associated with filing prevented another 7.8 million to 12.2 million workers from filing, the EPI study estimated, based on its analysis of survey data from nearly 25,000 respondents.
Bloomberg
May 1, 2020