What fully funded means remains a moving target, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Currently, lawmakers have planned PPP funding to last roughly eight weeks after a company’s loan is received. If, as Gould estimates, businesses with fewer than 500 employees spend about $236 billion a month on payroll, a prolonged interruption could cause that tally to escalate to around $1 trillion in a matter of months. And that’s without accounting for bigger companies’ use of the program.
Inc.
April 29, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute estimates that at least 11 million Americans have lost employer-provided health insurance within the past five weeks. And without health insurance, coronavirus treatment can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Josh Bivens is the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, and he joined CBSN to discuss.
CBS News
April 29, 2020
For myself, as a student of political science and women’s and gender studies, I’ve been startled to see the ways in which inequalities have become more apparent and devastating as the pandemic has progressed. For Dr. Anderson, he was “thinking about the single mother in The Bronx housing projects…whose kid has been out of school, who primarily gets their lunch from the school lunch program, and what are they doing to social distance, what are they doing to pay the bills? They don’t have a white collar job where they’re sitting at home. In some respects social isolation and social distancing and quarantine are, to put it really bluntly, for rich people.” For people like us, the ability to have a discussion of these issues in the abstract highlights a stark privilege afforded to certain parts of society which can wait out the pandemic that is not granted to the vast majority of people. Research done at the Economic Policy Institute shows that Black and hispanic workers in the U.S. are much less likely to be able to work from home due to their work in essential services, leisure and hospitality, giving them less flexibility and putting them at a significantly higher risk of contracting COVID-19. The socio-economic and particularly racialized impacts of the pandemic are being witnessed in cities like Detroit, where systematic marginalization and discrimination leaves African-American communities at a substantially higher risk.
Medium
April 29, 2020
“It’s an absolute disgrace they would take advantage of a pandemic to frustrate workers’ ability to organize and get better representation for themselves so they’re not risking their lives to perform essential services,” said Celine McNicholas, government affairs director at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
According to a December 2019 EPI study, in over 40% of union organizing campaigns an employer violates the law.
“This is an extreme moment we’re in, but unfortunately this is the traditional employer playbook in opposing workers’ efforts to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and better health and safety provisions,” added McNicholas.
The Guardian
April 29, 2020
“The whole pandemic, I think, has laid bare all of the inadequacies of the US social safety net,” John Schmitt, the vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said. “A very basic thing every other advanced economy in the world guarantees workers is at least a minimum amount of paid sick days. The US does not have at the national level any laws like that.
“It’s hard for me to imagine that there won’t be significant support when the dust settles for state, local and federal legislation to address that incredibly longstanding policy failure,” he said.
There are two other areas where Schmitt predicted there would be strong demand for lasting change. One is unemployment insurance, currently a meagre patchwork of different state systems subject to minimum national standards.
The Guardian
April 29, 2020
“The usual relationship that we see between the national unemployment rate and the black unemployment rate is typically really close to a two to one,” said Valerie Wilson, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.
“Whatever is being projected for the national unemployment rate, in most instances, we expect to see something close to twice that for black Americans.”
The Guardian
April 28, 2020
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found in an online poll that for every 10 people who have successfully filed unemployment claims, three or four people have been unable to register and another two people have not tried to apply at a time of acute economic crisis.
Official US statistics show that 26.5 million people have applied for unemployment benefits since March 15, wiping out all of the jobs gained during the longest employment boom in American history.
EPI’s survey indicates that an additional 8.9 million to 13.9 million people have been shut out of the system, according to Ben Zipperer, the study’s lead author.
‘This study validates the anecdotes and news reports we’re seeing about people having trouble filing for benefits they need and deserve,’ Zipperer said.
Reuters
April 28, 2020
2 Economic Policy Institute, “The growing trade deficit with China has led to a loss of 3.4 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2017” (23 October 2018), online: <www.epi.org/press/the-growing-trade-deficit-with-china-has-led-to-a-loss-of-3-4- million-u-s-jobs-between-2001-and-2017/>.
Centre for International Governance Innovation
April 28, 2020
According to a staff memo to council, a report from the Economic Policy Institute estimates that for every 100 direct construction industry jobs, 226 indirect jobs — suppliers, goods and services — are created.
“Direct and indirect employment and spending will infuse cash into the regional economy, add value to real property in the city, and contribute to regional recovery,” the memo reads.
The Aspen Times
April 28, 2020
In Western and Northern European countries, for example, governments have taken aggressive action — often at the urging of the Left and labor unions — to protect workers’ jobs during the crisis so they’ll be waiting for them when it’s safe to return to business as usual, and providing relief adequate relief in the interim. Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute call this approach “deep-freezing the economy,” the idea being that it can be thawed out and quickly restored when the pandemic is over. Yes, it costs money, but so does an interminable economic slump.
Jacobin
April 28, 2020