Media clips

---

• Even as unemployment claims recede from peak, another quarter million Texans apply

  A survey by the Economic Policy Institute found that for every 100 workers who filed for unemployment insurance, 37 additional workers tried to apply but could not connect with the unemployment benefits system to make a claim.

  Houston Chronicle May 8, 2020
• SOUTH DAKOTA’S UNCOUNTED UNEMPLOYED WORKERS TAKING BRUNT OF COVID-19 HARDSHIPS

  As many as 14 million Americans who could qualify for some type of unemployment compensation are not receiving assistance, according to a survey published April 28 by the Economic Policy Institute.

  Freeman South Dakota Freeman May 8, 2020
• Jobless claims climb to 33M in seven weeks as nation braces for historic unemployment rate

  “At the low end, the jobs losses in April will most certainly have cancelled out all of the gains in the recovery from the Great Recession,” Elise Gould,  a senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post. “At the high end, we will have returned to a level of employment last experienced in the mid-1990s, canceling out all of the gains in employment over the last 25 years.”

  USA Today May 8, 2020
• 21M job losses, 16% unemployment would reflect just part of the economic damage from the coronavirus

  Lydia Boussour, senior U.S. economist for Oxford Economics, expects the report to show even more job losses — 28 million. She cites an Economic Policy Institute analysis noting that as many as 14 million Americans couldn’t file jobless claims because of swamped phone and computer systems.

  Yet she estimates one-third of those laid off left the labor force, pushing the participation rate below 60%, a level that hasn’t been seen in more than 50 years. If those jobless Americans had looked for work, the unemployment rate could soar to upwards of 21%.

  USA Today May 8, 2020
• Data Sharpen Focus On How Many Workers Lost Jobs To COVID-19

  ZARROLI: Yeah. I mean, we are seeing fewer job losses every week. That’s a good sign. Last week, we saw 3.2 million jobs lost, which was about half of what it was at the end of March. But the numbers are still high. I talked with Elise Gould, who is a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, which is sort of a left-leaning think tank. She says we’re going to continue to bleed jobs for a while.

  ELISE GOULD: I think we are not near the peak yet. I think we are still going to see additional job losses show up in the data for May, for June. Unfortunately, I don’t think this has gotten as bad as it will get yet.

  NPR May 8, 2020
• Nevada, Hawaii are among the states most likely to feel the economic hit by COVID-19

  24/7 Wall St. created an index of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on each state’s economy, taking into account the number of COVID-19 cases per 10,000 residents, the share of employment in industries deemed high risk by Moody’s, new unemployment claims since mid-March and projected unemployment rates by state for July 2020 from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.

  As is the case with its neighbor to the south, Virginia, Maryland’s economy is not especially exposed to slowdown in the wake of COVID-19. A relatively small share of workers in the state, 15.7%, are employed in industries that are projected to bear the brunt of the economic fallout. According to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute, Maryland’s unemployment rate in July will be just 13.9%, the lowest of any state according to projections.

  Methodology

  To determine the states most likely to be hurt by COVID-19, 24/7 Wall St. created a weighted index of four measures. The first measure, which comprises 30% of the index, is the share of total employment in industries deemed to be at high-risk of slowdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. The second measure, which comprises 20% of the index, is the number of diagnosed cases per capita as of April 27 2020. The third measure, which comprises 30% of the index, is the number of new unemployment claims made since the week ending March 21 as a share of the 2018 state labor force, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The fourth measure, which comprises 20% of the index, is the projected unemployment rate by state for July 2020 from a report published on April 1 by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.

  USA Today May 8, 2020
• Economists Break Down U.S. Unemployment Numbers

  What do the latest unemployment rates mean for the U.S. economy? NPR’s Noel King speaks with Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute and Claudia Goldin of Harvard University.

  NPR May 8, 2020
• US unemployment spikes to a Depression-era level of 14.7%

  Counting them as unemployed would push the rate up further, to 24%, according to calculations by Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

  Associated Press May 8, 2020
• The Government Is Ready to Reopen. Its Citizens Aren’t, Polls Show.

  Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute used a nonscientific survey to estimate that in addition to those already on the unemployment rolls, eight to 12 million people could have applied for joblessness benefits since the start of the pandemic but did not. Most of those people, the study determined, reported that they had sought to file for unemployment but had been unable to make it through the application; others simply did not make an attempt.

  The implications of such staggering job losses carry over into other facets of life, including health care access and food security. According to a separate analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, as of last week nearly 13 million people had lost access to employer-provided health care.

  The New York Times May 8, 2020
• Essential, and No Longer Disposable

  Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me that the spotlight on these essential industries has only crystallized what the long-term labor-market projections have already made clear: Relying solely on improving skills to improve living standards is a flawed strategy because forecasts show that the share of jobs requiring advanced education won’t be much larger in the future than it is now.

  The Atlantic May 8, 2020