Local labor experts, meanwhile, say many current mid-Hudson openings pay less than $20 an hour (often just $12 to $16), well below the $44,000 to $59,000 annually that the Economic Policy Institute estimates a typical Hudson Valley resident needs to survive.
Times Herald-Record
April 27, 2020
Jaimie Worker, senior state policy coordinator for the Washington, D.C.-based, left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, suggested more federal relief — not reopening businesses — is what people need to stay safe and financially secure right now.
“Without a vaccine or effective coronavirus treatment, reopening should continue to be gradual and only occur when the rate of new infections has slowed, hospital capacity is sufficient, when effective testing is in place and when we’re able to effectively trace and quarantine those who are infected or even potentially infected,” she said.
The Tennessean
April 27, 2020
As nonessential businesses shuttered to observe stay-at-home orders and Centers for Disease Control guidelines, millions of Americans have lost their jobs. In Missouri, more than 252,000 people filed new unemployment claims in the first three weeks of April. And according to estimates released on Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, job losses of this magnitude would translate into an unemployment rate of 18 percent – higher than at any point since the Great Depression.
The Examiner
April 27, 2020
According to the Economic Policy Institute think tank, about half of states have passed “pre-emption laws” that forbid municipalities from passing their own PSL laws. This means that in places like Louisiana and Georgia that have no state-wide PSL laws, localities can’t pass their own. National COSH blames the NRA’s lobbying for this and other efforts to undermine the passage of these kinds of pro-labor laws.
Forbes
April 27, 2020
The gap is further exemplified by worker demographics — around 16% of Hispanic workers and less than 20% of black workers are able to work from home, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Asian-American workers are most likely to have the ability to work from home, followed by non-Hispanic and white workers, the Economic Policy Institute reported.
Overall, less than 30% of American workers have the option to work from home, according to the Economic Policy Institute. School closures are adding to the burden: Workers are being forced to choose between taking care of their kids and working, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Lexington Herald-Leader
April 27, 2020
Projections vary on the future of leisure and hospitality employment in Santa Barbara County. The country has already surpassed the 19.8 million job loss the Economic Policy Institute predicted would occur by June, according to Rupert. That would translate to about 165,000 jobs lost in California’s leisure and hospitality sector, 11,000 of which would come from Santa Barbara County. Taking the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s projection of 47 million jobs lost across the nation by June, that would translate to about 392,000 hospitality and leisure jobs lost in California, 26,000 from Santa Barbara County.
Edhat Santa Barbara
April 27, 2020
In New York, COVID-19 kills Hispanic/Latinos at 1.6 times the rate of whites, the foundation’s research found. In other regions of the U.S., Hispanic/Latinos and black are also more likely to work in low-wage jobs that suffer high rates of layoffs, or limit their ability to work remotely, according to data from Economic Policy Institute Economist and former U.S. Department of Labor Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz in a New York Times study.
Oroville Mercury-Register
April 27, 2020
Immigration’s impacts on the food supply are especially pronounced in the United States, where more than 50% of the agricultural workforce is comprised of undocumented immigrants. “Since time immemorial, immigrant workers have been especially vulnerable in our economy and have been doing difficult and dangerous jobs,” says Daniel Costa, who leads immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “Farm workers are by far some of the lowest paid workers in the labor market.”
Quartz
April 27, 2020
For decades, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has been charting wages and wealth in this country. For example, here are nine charts EPI released about American wages and income inequality back in 2015, well before Donald Trump’s election; as we can see, they make two key points about conditions under Trump’s predecessors:
Breitbart
April 27, 2020
The story is similar for Blacks. Nationally, only 16.2 percent of Hispanic workers and 19.7 percent of Blacks can telework, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
City Limits
April 27, 2020