Recent research by the Economic Policy Institute found less than 30% of Americans can work from home, but the numbers vary widely by race and ethnicity. Less than one-fifth of black workers and one-sixth of Latinos can telecommute, compared to 37% of Asians and 30% of white workers.
April 8, 2020
Also real is the economic emergency that workers, families and small businesses face. At some point, Washingtonians will get to the other side of the COVID-19 crisis and begin a long economic recovery. Already, economists are attempting to forecast the national economic picture for the months to come. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a 12 percent unemployment rate by the end of June, dropping only to 9 percent by the end of 2021. The Economic Policy Institute projects an unemployment rate around 15 percent by the end of June for the country and Washington state. January’s unemployment rate of 3.6 percent seems like a dream.
Lynwood Today
April 8, 2020
Economic Policy Institute President Thea Lee will provide a timely analysis on the economic impact of state and local budgets amid the public health crisis and outline steps to shore up state and local finances.
South Florida Caribbean News
April 8, 2020
Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor said the CARES Act was too prohibitive in how states can make use of the federal aid:
“One of the problems with the aid to state governments in the last recovery package is that it could only be used for costs directly related to fighting the virus or to dealing with the spike in joblessness related to the virus.”
KRCR 7 News
April 8, 2020
And coverage for COVID-19 health issues also doesn’t provide any assistance for those who have lost work and now have to pay for family doctor appointments, medications and other care that are unrelated to the outbreak. With at least 8.7 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits during the last two weeks, an estimated 3.5 million of those have likely lost their employer-provided health insurance, the Economic Policy Institute reported last week.
The Herald
April 8, 2020
Many of the problems can be traced to poor staffing, budget cuts, and antiquated technology dating back several decades ago, according to Heidi Shierholz, a labor expert and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute.
“These programs have been drastically underfunded for decades,” Schierholz told Business Insider. “We haven’t made the investments that we would need to be agile and effective enough to absorb what we’re seeing.”
April 8, 2020
Private arbitration has become an increasingly popular mechanism for companies looking to settle disputes out of court. One 2018 study by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that more than half of all nonunion private-sector employers require workers to resolve conflicts through the process, double the rate from the early 2000s. Among large companies, with at least 1,000 employees, that share jumps to roughly two-thirds.
April 8, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan D.C. think tank, estimated in an April 2 report that the 3.5 million Americans likely lost their coverage with their jobs in the last two weeks, including abut 420,000 Californians.
Fresno Bee
April 8, 2020
(Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a blog post on the Economic Policy Institute’s website. For the full article, please click here.)
In the last two weeks, nearly 10 million people applied for unemployment insurance. …
April 8, 2020