But the recovery from the pandemic was uniquely fast, Valerie Wilson, a labor economist and the director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said. There was also a robust policy response at the time to address Americans who were struggling and out of work.
This time, the circumstances feel more uncertain.
“It’s difficult to predict whether we can recover quickly,” Wilson said. “That will depend on how quickly Congress moves to counteract the recession.”
Yahoo Finance
September 8, 2025
“Job losses were particularly acute in professional/business services, the federal government, and wholesale trade, but there have also been sustained losses over recent months in manufacturing, construction, and mining, an indication that Trump’s blue-collar renaissance is clearly not happening,” Economic Policy Institute senior economist Elise Gould said.
Washington Times
September 8, 2025
Lynn Rhinehart, a senior fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and former general counsel at the AFL-CIO, the country’s largest labour union federation, said that Trump’s executive orders marked the beginning of a longer campaign against organised labour.
“Trump’s real motivation is clear – the executive order is a retaliatory action against federal employee unions who are standing in the way of Trump’s union-busting agenda,” she said.
That agenda doesn’t stop with executive orders. Trump fired NLRB chair Gwynne Wilcox in January, saying that her opinions had “unduly disfavoured” employers. The decision – which Wilcox continues to fight in the courts – leaves the country’s top labour watchdog without the quorum it needs to hear cases and issue decisions.
France 24
September 8, 2025
In April, Trump said that since the beginning of NAFTA, the U.S. lost 90,000 factories, reiterating the need for American reshoring. While the figure matched what was used in a 2020 report from the Economic Policy Institute, revised Census data used in that report found a net loss of 70,500 manufacturing facilities between 1997 to 2022, CBS News first reported. About a quarter of those factories had four or fewer workers.
Fortune
September 8, 2025
California is home to more than 300,000 temporary immigrant workers, making it the largest host state, according to the Economic Policy Institute. They range from farm and construction laborers to nurses and software engineers.
Capital & Main
September 8, 2025
“It seems likely that the Trump administration will use Friday’s jobs report to continue to argue that their immigration policies are creating job market opportunities for U.S.-born workers, but this claim is false and based on a misreading of data from the household survey,” Ben Zipperer, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog.
“If anything, the job market for U.S.-born workers is worse so far in 2025 than it was in preceding years.”
NBC News
September 8, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute called the idea “foolish and dangerous” in February, adding that only the most highly tipped workers will gain from the rule.
“It makes no sense for lawmakers to give preference in the tax code to servers in expensive, high-end restaurants who are receiving large tips over a waitress at Denny’s struggling to make ends meet,” the EPI said. “Nor does it make sense to give tax preference to low-wage tipped workers over nontipped low-wage workers like a bank teller, a retail cashier, or a teacher’s aide. Efforts to raise pay for low-wage workers should focus on the level of earnings, not whether payment came as a gratuity.”
Chappaqua Daily Voice
September 8, 2025
Heidi Shierholz is the President of the Economic Policy Institute and the former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and she joins me now.
CNN International
September 8, 2025
More than 90 percent of union workers nationwide have employer-paid health benefits, compared to just 71 percent of nonunion peers, according to research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.
Nation of Change
September 8, 2025
Raising two children from infancy through college remains one of the costliest undertakings. Using Economic Policy Institute data, Investopedia calculates $650,000 to cover childcare, transportation, meals, and other expenses, with college costs exceeding $230,000 for two children.
Newsweek
September 8, 2025