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
The number of people who are already dealing with food insecurity, just within the domestic worker community alone is devastating — it’s at the level of a crisis,” said Julia Wolfe, the state policy analyst at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “We do believe the human cost of not including more workers in the federal relief will be devastating.
Orlando Sentinel
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
Joe Robinson, Frederick County Fruit Growers Association manager, noted the Trump administration exempted H-2A workers who already have visas from COVID-19 immigration restrictions last month because they are crucial to the nation’s food supply. H-2A workers comprise about 10% of the nation’s 1.18 million hired farm workers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Economic Policy Institute.
The Winchester Star
April 23, 2020
Even with federal relief, the District could see unemployment soar above 23 percent by July, according to projections from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Maryland and Virginia could reach 14 percent unemployment by the same time. For this part of the country, that’s extremely high — even at the peak of the Great Recession, the Washington region’s joblessness rate never cracked 7 percent.
DCist
April 23, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute estimates, in the past four weeks, around 9 million Americans have likely lost their employer-sponsored health insurance. A handful of states have either expanded Medicaid or opened a special enrollment period for people to sign up for ACA coverage during the pandemic.
The Triangle Tribune
April 23, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute has also proposed a more generous plan for a fourth round of stimulus funding, including $500 billion for states, more extended unemployment insurance, another direct payment to households, and deficit-financed infrastructure investment.
“How policymakers respond now will determine the level of pain working families experience and the speed at which the economy can get back on track after the shutdown period is over. The relief and recovery packages passed since the crisis began included many good measures, but they are still too little and some provisions in these packages represent policy missteps,” EPI analysts wrote in a policy brief.
KOMO News
April 23, 2020
African Americans face a higher risk of exposure to the virus, mostly on account of their living in urban areas and being employed in essential industries. Only 20% of black workers reported being eligible to work from home, compared with about 30% of their white counterparts, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Root
April 23, 2020
An inordinately high number of black workers cannot work from home, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute based on federal labor data from 2017-2018. Asian workers, followed by white workers, were most likely to be able to do their jobs remotely. Only 19.7% of black American workers said they can work from home. It might be reasonable to assume that the percentage of black workers who can work from their homes has risen today since the reality of the pandemic has forced employers to be innovative in providing ways for employees to work while abiding to the guidelines of social distancing.
The Quinnipiac Chronicle
April 23, 2020