A report from the Economic Policy Institute found that online learning and teaching are effective only if students have consistent access to the internet and computers and if teachers have received targeted training and support for online instruction.
Charlotte Observer
February 16, 2021
Nationally, about 793,000 people applied last week for their state’s unemployment benefits. It’s the 47th consecutive week that those claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession, according to economist Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.
Atlanta Journal Constitution
February 16, 2021
What is more, the investment would pay dividends for school systems. The Economic Policy Institute found that for every $1 invested in capital improvements to education facilities, $1.50 in eventual economic development in the community is generated. A Quarterly Journal of Economics study found that educational advancement, housing prices and school enrollment increases follow suit.
Detroit Free Press
February 16, 2021
“We’ve been talking about this so long that $15, had we gotten there years ago, would have been worth a lot more than $15 in 2025 would be worth,” David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, told Insider.
Business Insider
February 16, 2021
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Senior Economist Heidi Shierholz, who was Chief Economist at the Department of Labor under President Obama, called CBO’s employment effects of the minimum wage “really out there,” saying “CBO’s employment impacts of the minimum wage from today’s report are about 25% higher than they would have been if they had simply used the methods they themselves used two years ago. What is going ON.”
A cadre of EPI economists and analysts also wrote that they believe “the CBO’s assumptions on the scale of job-loss are just wrong and inappropriately inflated relative to what cutting-edge economics literature would indicate.”
Business Insider
February 16, 2021
A new report suggests those who work on farms still face obstacles when it comes to workplace protections, and some of the Iowa data isn’t pretty.
The nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute examined 15 years of federal enforcement of labor standards within agriculture.
Seventy percent of investigations by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division uncovered violations in this area among employers.
Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Institute, said not only are farmworkers in an industry that comes with safety risks, the numbers showed many are exploited financially as well.
“They’ve also been doing work without being adequately paid for it,” Costa contended. “By any objective measure, farmworkers are some of the lowest paid workers in the entire labor market.”
Public News Service
February 16, 2021
According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, have enacted minimum wages higher than the federal minimum. The highest minimum is $15 an hour, the wage in effect in the District of Columbia. Of the states, Washington has the highest minimum wage, at $13.69 per hour.
The Colorado Springs Business Journal
February 16, 2021
“Income would also shift toward lower-income people and away from higher-income people under the bill,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), during a call with reporters on Monday.
Truthout
February 16, 2021
Heritage Foundation research fellow Joel Griffith and Economic Policy Institute president Thea Lee discussed COVID-19 pandemic relief proposals and the U.S. economy.
C-SPAN Washington Journal
February 16, 2021
PennLive
February 16, 2021
“Unambiguously, [raising pay] makes low-wage workers better off. Even if you accept their job loss numbers,” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Shierholz pointed out that no other policy is subject to the kind of litmus test used to evaluate raising the minimum wage, where one drawback (job loss) is equally weighted against an overwhelming array of benefits. “We don’t hold other policies to that standard,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Huffpost
February 16, 2021
Last week marks the 47th straight week of initial unemployment claims totaling more than the worst week of the Great Recession, a fact that Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, says makes a strong case for further stimulus.
Courthouse News Service
February 16, 2021
Andy Pudzer and John Hartly see the hard-hitting costs hidden in Joe Biden’s minimum-wage increase proposal: From the piece:
In his attempt to overcome the Byrd rule, Sanders has cited new studies from two sources with a history of highly partisan research in support of minimum-wage hikes. Authored by the Economic Policy Institute and Berkeley economist Michael Reich these studies claim that a $15 federal minimum wage would positively impact the federal budget by tens of billions of dollars per year through increased tax revenue and reduced costs for public-assistance programs. Reich claims hiking the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would positively impact the federal budget to the tune of $65.4 billion a year.
The National Review
February 16, 2021
In 2017, more than one in four Black households had a nonexistent or negative net worth. That compares to fewer than one in 10 for White families, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Investopedia
February 16, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that nearly a third of all Black workers would get a raise under the Raise the Wage Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it could also raise wages for 17 million workers overall. Another 10 million workers earning just above $15 could also see an increase.
Counterpunch
February 16, 2021
State and local governments have had to carry much of the burden of the COVID-19 response through the past year, it said.
And it pointed to arguments from the liberal Economic Policy Institute and others that the federal response to the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008 slowed the economic recovery by not providing enough federal funding.
“We cannot repeat this same mistake,” the letter said.
The Frederick News-Post
February 16, 2021
Part of the reason for the shortage has to do with pay and working conditions. On average, teachers make roughly 20% less than other college graduates, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on worker issues. A majority of teachers work additional jobs – either within or outside their schools – to supplement their pay.
The Conversation
February 16, 2021
“I would like to see the Biden admin do this administratively – they have a crowded legislative agenda and this is one of the things they can do with executive power,” says Josh Bivens, economist and director of research at the Economic Policy Institute. “So, anything they can do themselves and de-clutter the legislative bottleneck is something I think they should do.”
CNBC
February 16, 2021
By 2024, such agreements would apply to roughly 80 percent of private-sector employees not in a union, according to an estimate in May 2019 by the nonpartisan research nonprofit the Economic Policy Institute and the pro-worker social justice advocacy group The Center for Popular Democracy.
Women's Wear Daily
February 16, 2021
I’ll do the math for you: that’s 1.13 million out-of-work Americans seeking benefits for the first time. If you think that’s an okay number, consider this from the Economic Policy Institute: it’s “the 47th straight week total initial (traditional) claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession.” The weekly number before we fell off the earth a year or so ago? Around 215,000.
Newsweek
February 16, 2021
A 2019 study from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank based in Washington, D.C., found that public school teachers in every state are paid less than their similarly educated peers. Arizona teachers faced the worst salary penalty: 32.6 percent.
AZ Mirror
February 16, 2021
The state level isn’t much better — just as states differ, so do counties. In Minnesota, a two-adult, two-child household in Wadena County would need 40% more money to meet the same needs in Carver County, for example, as can be determined by using the Economic Policy Institute’s online Family Budget Calculator.
Duluth News Tribune
February 16, 2021
Business Insider
February 16, 2021
Waiters and bartenders in states where the tipped minimum wage was still $2.13 per hour made almost 17% less than their counterparts in other states, according to a 2017 study from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Washington Times
February 16, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute writes that there are 1.6 unemployed workers for every job opening.
Business Insider
February 16, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute, which receives some of its funding from labor unions, analyzed the same congressional proposal as the CBO but found more workers would see higher wages.
It estimated the legislation would raise the pay of nearly 32 million workers and “meaningfully reduce the number of families in poverty.”
EPI also argues that a single, full-time worker without kids needs $15 an hour “to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living.”
FactCheck.org
February 16, 2021
For factual but dense reading go to “50 reasons the Trump administration is bad for workers” by the Economic Policy Institute, freely available on the web.
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
February 16, 2021
Black workers, especially, are overrepresented in essential jobs. Even though they represent about 12 percent of the total U.S. workforce, Black people hold roughly 14 percent of grocery store jobs, 26 percent of public transit positions, 18 percent of postal service jobs, 17.5 percent of health-care positions, and 19 percent of roles in child-care and social services, according to a 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Shape Magazine
February 16, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a study that is already two years old, showing that Chief Executive Officer (CEO) pay for the top 350 firms in the country had grown by more than 1000% from 1978 to 2018.
What is more incredible is that the “bootstraps to riches” story is more and more a farce. The ratio of pay for a CEO to the average worker in 1965 was 20/1, meaning if an average worker was making $10,000, the average CEO was making $200,000. Definitely a disparity, but not crazy.
Huron Plainsman
February 16, 2021
Some economists took umbrage with that number, and how the CBO came to that projection.
“We believe that the CBO’s assumptions on the scale of job loss are just wrong and inappropriately inflated relative to what cutting-edge economics literature would indicate,” The Economic Policy Institute wrote in a blog post on the report. “The median employment effect of the minimum wage across studies of low-wage workers is essentially zero, according to a 2019 review of the evidence.”
Business Insider
February 16, 2021