“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
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
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
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
Ultimately, for all its limits, the CARES Act is “much more balanced than most things to come out of Congress,” said Josh Bivens, the research director at the Economic Policy Institute. “The real way that policy benefits the wealthy over everyone else is in the day-to-day grind of policymaking.” These benefits come in many forms, from laws limiting union power to the stagnant federal minimum wage to a tax code that has, remarkably, done little to offset the dramatic rise in income inequality in the U.S. over the last four decades. “When there’s less of a spotlight, then the people who have more resources to put on that pressure every single day, they just win those fights. There’s just not an apparatus of people waking up every day looking to fight for the economic interest of low- and middle-income workers.”
The New Republic
May 7, 2020
In San Francisco, an experienced director of communications might make $120,00 a year, which turns into about $80,400 cash in hand after state, local and federal taxes are factored in. The office is 15 miles away and an hour commute each way. That’s another $4,380 per year, using a cost-of-commuting calculator, and roughly 21 days spent each year driving to and from work. Housing for a couple, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s budget calculator, runs about $28,700.
Research by Rate
May 7, 2020
In the past six weeks, states have struggled to process over 33 million jobless claims, more than they typically see in a year. That figure does not capture those who have been unable to even file a claim due to bureaucratic hurdles — up to 14 million more, according to an Economic Policy Institute study released last week.
Reuters
May 7, 2020
Still, the job losses may be far worse than government figures indicate. And that might dictate how this downturn, unique and breathtaking in its severity, is tackled. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that roughly 50 percent more people than counted as filing claims in a recent four-week period may have qualified for benefits but were stymied in applying or didn’t even try because they found the process too formidable.
Hunt Scanlon Media
May 7, 2020
Six in 10 H-1B positions that are certified by the US department of labor (DoL) are assigned below the median of the local wage for the occupation, according to a paper published on May 4 by Washington DC-based think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Quartz
May 7, 2020