The analysis Sanders relied on came from economist Robert Scott at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
For NAFTA, Scott took the rising U.S.-Mexico trade deficit and teased out how that translated into job effects at the state level. Between 1993 and 2010, and accounting for the Great Recession, Scott found a loss of 43,600 jobs in Michigan.
Our Sources
Economic Policy Institute, Growing China trade deficit cost 3.7 million American jobs between 2001 and 2018, Jan. 30, 2020
Economic Policy Institute, Heading South U.S.-Mexico trade and job displacement after NAFTA, May 3, 2011
Politifact
April 1, 2020
Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) think tank, told Newsweek cutting payroll tax “is not the worst opening offer one could imagine coming from the Trump White House, but it’s still really inferior to a lot of other ideas that should be in the top tier.”
“Even a large payroll tax cut would have trouble offsetting the corona shock to the economy—it would be disbursed too gradually and too much of the benefit would go to pretty high-income households who won’t spend enough of it,” Bivens said
Newsweek
April 1, 2020
Shierholz, who is now the director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, said overtime reform is one of the most direct ways Maine lawmakers can help middle-class workers.
“Minimum wage laws only hit, by definition, workers at the very low end of the wage distribution,” she explained. “I think there’s enough evidence to say the economy is rigged against working people. That’s not just happening at the bottom. That’s also happening at the middle of the wage distribution. But there is no minimum wage for the middle class. So, overtime protections are one way to help workers in the middle.”
Maine Beacon
April 1, 2020
“401(k)s are an accident of history”: That’s the title of a 2017 article at the Economic Policy Institute, which goes on to say that “401(k)s were never intended to replace pensions.”
Forbes
April 1, 2020
Unlike in Europe, paid sick leave is a luxury in the United States, where 55 percent of workers in the hotel and restaurant trade do not have access to it, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
International Business Times
April 1, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank, said even if fast food workers find a way to stay home when sick, directives to seek medical attention go unheeded for the uninsured.
“Seventy-three percent of workers have paid sick days, so about a quarter don’t. And these are often the low wage jobs, the service sector,” Gould said. “Hourly workers take care of children and the elderly. Those who work as home health aides — or in retirement homes or nursing homes. Children don’t seem to be at risk themselves, but they have the ability to spread the disease. And they have less respiratory etiquette.”
“Staying home or working from home can be easy for upper middle class people with good jobs,” she added. “The recommendations from the CDC — all the common sense things — could lead to economic catastrophe for the low-wage worker. This whole situation shows in painstaking detail how fragile our safety net is.”
WJNT
April 1, 2020
About 75% of private-sector workers in the United States had access to paid sick leave in 2019, according to Labor Department data. (For public-sector workers, it’s more than 90%.) Only 65% of private-sector employees in Ohio and other industrial Midwest states have access to paid sick time, according tan analysis of federal data by the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. The Eastern Southern U.S., at 62%, is the only region with a lower percentage of workers without paid sick days.
Cleveland.com
April 1, 2020
The United States is unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic given that many workers throughout the economy will have financial difficulty in following the CDC’s recommendations to stay home and seek medical care if they think they’ve become infected. Millions of U.S. workers and their families don’t have access to health insurance, and only 30% of the lowest paid workers have the ability to earn paid sick days — workers who typically have lots of contact with the public and aren’t able to work from home.
Talking Points Memo
April 1, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute released a white paper outlining the many benefits that Medicare for All would have for workers and the labor market: increased wages and salaries; job growth, even in the healthcare sector; elimination of “job lock” where people are held hostage at jobs just to keep their health benefits; and would particularly help female workers, who disproportionately work at jobs that don’t provide benefits.
Healthcare-Now
April 1, 2020
LINCOLN, Neb. — New research from the Economic Policy Institute shows that switching to a single-payer health system would boost the overall economy, make it easier for workers to switch jobs or start businesses and create a net surplus of new jobs.
Josh Bivens, research director at the institute, said wages would likely go up under a Medicare for all system because owners could elect to give some of the money that would have otherwise gone to insurance companies to workers instead.
“And so you’ve got about $700 billion today that is employee compensation that comes in the form of employers paying for health insurance premiums,” Bivens said. “You take that off their back, it’s the potential for employers to instead pay higher wages.”
Public News Service
April 1, 2020