Media clips
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Women make up a majority of workers in some industries that have been hit hardest, such as health care, where many jobs outside hospitals have been lost, and hotels and restaurants. Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, calculates that 56% of the layoffs have involved women.
Associated Press April 24, 2020 -
5. Economic Policy Institute: The unemployment rate “will likely not reflect all coronavirus-related layoffs”
“All else equal, job losses of this magnitude would translate into an unemployment rate of 18.3%,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a note Thursday.
“However, the official unemployment rate, when it is released, will likely not reflect all coronavirus-related layoffs,” she said, adding this is because jobless workers are counted only as unemployed if they are actively seeking work.
She continued: “The UI claims of the last five weeks, while extraordinary, don’t even include most people who aren’t eligible for regular UI but are nevertheless out of work due to the virus—people like gig workers or independent contractors, and many others.”
Business Insider April 24, 2020 -
Even after restrictions begin to lift, the economic crisis will probably be unlike anything the U.S. has seen in several decades. On April 14th, the International Monetary Fund published a report predicting that the current period will be the beginning of the “worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis.” Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said that, while the U.S. government had taken some steps toward alleviating the damage, it hasn’t done nearly enough. She compared the response of American leaders to that of leaders in Denmark, who swiftly implemented a program to replace workers’ lost wages so that they could remain connected to their employers and could be summoned back again easily once it was deemed safe; the U.S. version, an emergency loan fund called the Paycheck Protection Program, has, so far, been riddled with implementation problems and has left many businesses that are in serious need without access to funds. “They’re getting what they need to survive the lockdown,” Shierholz said, referring to workers in Denmark. “So workers aren’t facing the trauma of job loss, which research shows can be very long-lasting, and can have effects on kids.” She went on, “We didn’t do what Denmark did. We chose not to. So we are going to be in a worse position, and we are not going to have as quick of a recovery.”
The New Yorker April 24, 2020 -
In 1994, public school teachers earned about 1.8% less per week than workers in other professions that required a college degree.
Source: TIME, The Economic Policy Institute
Business Insider April 24, 2020 -
“All else equal, job losses of this magnitude would translate into an unemployment rate of 18.3 [percent],” said Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Politico April 23, 2020 -
While some economists say the worst may be over in terms of the sheer weekly number of layoffs, the impact will be lasting. Job losses of this magnitude translate to an unemployment rate of 18.3%, though the official unemployment rate won’t reflect that because people are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, which is currently difficult in many industries, said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Labor Department.
Barron’s April 23, 2020 -
Many in-home caregivers have rapidly lost most of their income, with more than 55% of workers reporting that they could not make rent in April, according to an April 8 study from the Economic Policy Institute and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
“The bureaucracy has created unnecessary barriers that prevent people from getting the help they need,” says Julia Wolfe, an economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute. “The human cost of not including domestic workers in federal relief will be devastating.”
The median age for domestic workers is 45, about four years older than other occupations, according to the Economic Policy Institute. It’s a field that tends to employ a lot of women, millions of whom are women of color, and the primary breadwinners in their families. Numerous studies have shown that these lower-wage “pink collar” jobs tend to be less flexible, have less benefits like retirement plans, and pay less than other male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing.
With the economy at a standstill, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Economic Policy Institute are pushing for future stimulus bills to be more expansive — and to provide financial assistance to workers without social security numbers or tax returns.
Money April 23, 2020 -
Commuting during the pandemic is a reality for most Hispanic workers. Analyzing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an Economic Policy Institute report published March 19 found that 16% of Hispanic workers are able to work remotely, compared to 37% of Asian workers, 30% of white workers and nearly 20% of black workers. Low-wage workers have the least flexibility, EPI stated, as 9% in the lowest quartile of the wage distribution can telework compared with 61% of workers in the highest quartile. Along with having the least flexibility for telework, about half (49%) of Hispanic respondents said they or someone in their household has taken a pay cut or lost a job – or both – due to the COVID-19 outbreak, in comparison with 33% of all U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center.
HR Dive April 23, 2020 -
An article published by The Daily Times points out that most small businesses have only 15 to 30 days of cash on-hand. As a likely result, according to CNBC, “the disruption to businesses from coronavirus could lead to 15,000 permanent retail store closures in 2020, with the Economic Policy Institute predicting that the disease outbreak could potentially wipe out three million jobs from the U.S. economy before this summer.”
ABA Banking Journal April 23, 2020 -
But we never caught up after 2008. And as the Economic Policy Institute persuasively argues, our government’s aberrant decision to cut spending is largely responsible for that fact. “If government spending had increased by 11.7 percent, as it did during the Bush recovery of 2001–2007, the present expansion, which was constrained by a 6.1 percent decline in government spending, would easily have exceeded the size of the Bush expansion,” EPI economist Robert E. Scott writes. “If government spending had increased by 33.5 percent, as it did during the Reagan recovery (1982–1990), then the Obama recovery would surely rank as one of the strongest on record.”
New York Magazine April 23, 2020