Media clips
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“Policymakers have a lot of influence over how much people follow these measures that will not only save lives but will help our economic situation,” said Heidi Shierholz, policy director of the Economic Policy Institute and former Labor Department economist.
Shierholz warned that President Trump was “undermining” his administration’s efforts to encourage social distancing. “I don’t see how that won’t mean more lives will be lost and our economic situation will end up worse,” she noted.
KOMO News April 21, 2020 -
According to the Economic Policy Institute, 90 percent of the highest-earning private-sector workers are more likely to work from home and have access to paid sick leave, but seven in ten low-wage workers do not get paid sick leave. Nearly one-quarter of all workers-including two of three food service and one in three retail workers-receive no paid sick leave whatsoever. Only 25 percent of private-sector workers receive at least ten paid sick days annually after twenty years’ service.
Public April 21, 2020 -
Lawrence Mishel, a well-known labor economist, has been a critic of centrist Democrats for decades. “My adult lifetime has covered the Carter, Clinton and Obama years, and labor policy has never been a priority,” Mishel, the former president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, told me. In the 2016 primary, he voted for Bernie Sanders. This year he supported Elizabeth Warren. (So did I.)
But when Mishel saw Joe Biden’s labor policy, he was thrilled. “I think that if you had asked me in 2016 whether we would ever see an agenda like this, this is beyond my hopes,” he said.
Biden’s proposals go far beyond his call for a $15 federal minimum wage — a demand some saw as radical when Sanders pushed it four years ago. While it’s illegal for companies to fire employees for trying to organize a union, the penalties are toothless. Biden proposes to make those penalties bite and to hold executives personally liable. He would follow California in cracking down on companies like Uber that misclassify full-time workers as independent contractors who aren’t entitled to benefits. He’d extend federal labor protections to farmworkers and domestic workers.
Mishel said that no Democratic nominee in his lifetime has presented “as robust and fleshed out a policy suite on labor standards and unions.”
The New York Times April 21, 2020 -
● Between 1978 and 2017, according to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation rose in the US by 1,070 percent, while the typical worker’s compensation over these 39 years rose by a mere 11.2 percent.
World Socialist Web Site April 21, 2020 -
The Economic Policy Institute also published an article discussing the “work from home” divide that differs significantly by race and ethnicity, noting that black and Hispanic workers are far less likely to be able to telework. And despite the allowance for its essential nature in the midst of a pandemic, Chime Solutions has risen to the occasion.
Charlotte Inno April 21, 2020 -
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said in a statement endorsing the Paycheck Security Act that “workers and their families are paying the price for going into the current crisis with a weak social insurance system and public safety net.”
“Given this pre-existing weakness, transformative responses to this economic crisis have to be put together on the fly,” Bivens said, “and the Paycheck Security Act is a bold solution to provide needed relief during the lockdown period of the crisis and would put us in much better position to mount a rapid recovery once the public health all-clear was sounded.”
Common Dreams April 21, 2020 -
According to recent estimates by the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, the unemployment rate may hit nearly 16% by July – higher than at any point since the Great Depression. Over the past month, more than 570,000 people in Massachusetts have filed unemployment claims, according to the April 16 U.S. Department of Labor report. With the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases surpassing 37,000 (as of April 19, with fatalities now exceeding 1,700) as the pandemic surges, it appears non-essential businesses will remain closed through mid-May at a minimum.
The Real Reporter April 21, 2020 -
The McKinsey report also shows the impact of COVID-19 on Black communities will likely extend beyond high rates of mortality to high rates of unemployment and bankruptcy, as another 39% of Black workers are in jobs that are vulnerable to furloughs, layoffs, or being rendered unproductive during periods of high physical distancing (5 points higher than Whites and 7 points higher than Asian Americans). The Center for American Progress has a brief on occupational segregation with data showing that African Americans are overrepresented in many low-wage jobs vulnerable to layoffs during the pandemic, that Black households have less liquidity to respond to an emergency, and that Black workers are less likely to be able to telework (see also this Economic Policy Institute post estimating that only 19.7% of Black workers can telework).
Houston Style Magazine April 21, 2020 -
Senior Economic Policy Institute (EPI) economist Elise Gould recently wrote of how just 30% of US minimum-wage workers have the ability to accrue paid sick days. A large number of these are in the food industry, and have direct and frequent contact with the public.
Citizen Truth April 21, 2020 -
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), says that while college graduates of recent years were seeing an improvement in the job market, their economic outlook had never fully recovered to a level that previous generations enjoyed.
“That benchmark of getting back to 2007 was actually a low bar for where we wanted to get back to,” Gould said. “I think we’re still a ways away from trying to get back to the kind of economy we had in 2000, and that should be the target in this recovery.”
Further compounding the current grim economic forecast is the magnitude in which the economy has been reshaped by the viral outbreak. Unlike in 2008, many businesses have now been forced to unexpectedly close and halt operations.
“Presumably, when we get on the other side of this, a lot of those places will open. The ones that did not go out of business will probably reopen relatively quickly,” Gould said.
However, Gould said she believes there will be many similar trends to the 2008 financial crisis, such as elevated unemployment rates and an increase in underemployment, especially as businesses begin to reopen their doors.
“[Recent graduates] are going to be scrambling to get jobs so they can start paying off their student loans. They may not wait for a job that gets them on the career trajectory that they hoped for,” Gould said. “Or they may be in a little bit of a waiting pattern to get their foothold in their career while they work in other jobs.”
Student loan deferment — such as what is proposed in Harder and Romney’s bills — is helpful, according to Gould. But she said it is “premature” to set an end date on the deferment period, since it is unclear as to how long this economic downturn will last.
“We certainly don’t want to set up those new grads to fail and default on those loans. That doesn’t help anybody,” Gould said. “So we want to provide an adequate safety net to make sure that those new grads not only can try to get started on their careers, but can get on track to be able to pay back those loans.”
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators April 21, 2020