Heidi Shierholz, senior economist and director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, rejects the argument that a wage hike would lead to job losses.
“That claim of job loss isn’t supported by evidence — it’s likely an overestimate of negative employment impact. But even if you accept their findings, they still find the benefits far outweigh the costs,” Shierholz, formerly the Labor Department’s chief economist under Barack Obama, told CBS MoneyWatch.
CBS Moneywatch
January 19, 2021
And things aren’t turning around. In early January, we got a very bad employment report for December 2020. Aside from an overall national decline of 140,000 jobs, economist Elise Gould at the Economic Policy Institute noted “state and local government employment continued to decline” for the fourth month in a row, feeding a cumulative “shortfall of 1.4 million from pre-pandemic conditions,” especially in education.
Forbes
January 19, 2021
“Last week was the 43rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession,” Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute wrote.
The Fiscal Times
January 19, 2021
By Josh Bivens, a statement by the Economic Policy Institute
Today, President-elect Biden announced a proposed relief and recovery package that provides relief that is commensurate with the scale of the economic challenge facing the United States, due to the harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The urgent economic priorities facing the nation are simple: get control over the spread of the virus and then ensure that U.S. households, businesses, and governments spend and invest enough to radically reduce unemployment and boost workers’ wages. The Biden package ticks these boxes. The continuation of enhanced pandemic-related unemployment insurance programs, the substantial fiscal aid to state and local governments, the investments in virus control and mitigation, and the increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour are all absolutely essential for rapid relief and a fast and equitable recovery.
24/7 Wall Street
January 19, 2021
According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, this week’s data is “messy” — President Trump did not sign a bill expanding unemployment benefits until a day after benefits expired, leading to confusion and some people needing to re-apply for benefits — but EPI’s read of the data is that layoffs are increasing as states roll back reopening plans.
Next City
January 19, 2021
An analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., found that the average annual cost of infant care in Virginia is $14,000. It goes down to $11,000 for a 4-year-old.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
January 19, 2021
However, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, argues that a breakdown of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures and other estimates based on those paint a far bleaker picture due to the business closures and public health restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It estimates that approximately 26.8 million workers are being negatively affected — or nearly 16% of the workforce.
MarketWatch
January 19, 2021
“The solution to low pay is clear. By raising the minimum wage to $15, we can benefit nearly 40 million Americans — predominantly women and workers of color — while reducing the racial wealth gap and giving millions of essential workers who put their lives on the line every day a permanent raise,” Fight for $15 writes, citing data from the Brookings Institute and the Economic Policy Institute.
Fox Business
January 19, 2021
“The solution to low pay is clear,” says Fight for 15, which has strong union support, led by the Service Employees. “By raising the minimum wage to $15, we can benefit nearly 40 million Americans—predominantly women and workers of color—while reducing the racial wealth gap and giving millions of essential workers who put their lives on the line every day a permanent raise.”
That impact figure is low, since the movement took it from a two-year-old Economic Policy Institute report, far before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Still, that study shows 60% of the 39.7 million workers who would benefit from the raise were full-timers and 55% were women. Combined, all those workers cared for almost 15 million kids. Some 5.4 million workers were single parents, EPI reported.
People's Weekly World
January 19, 2021
Compared with their counterparts, ages 25 and older, Generation Z has always had higher unemployment numbers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. However, the pandemic has caused those numbers to increase dramatically.
Yahoo Finance
January 19, 2021
This article was first published by the “Working Economics Blog” of the Economic Policy Institute.
Recent proposals for large-scale fiscal relief and recovery from the economic effects of COVID-19 have drawn criticism that they could lead to “overheating” of the U.S. economy. These criticisms should be ignored. Proposals under discussion — including Biden’s economic plan introduced on January 14—are highly unlikely to lead to any durable uptick in inflation or interest rates (the normal indicators of “overheating”). And even if they did, these higher interest rates and inflation would be a welcome sign of economic healing, not something to worry about.
In These Times
January 19, 2021
Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor and the current senior economist and policy director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., told ABC News, “The utter lack of a coherent, effective response to COVID has just done enormous damage to the economy.”
The COVID-19 economic downturn has also made racial inequity worse, Shierholz added, and “hurt Black and Brown communities far worse, not just from a health perspective, but also from the perspective of job loss.”
Communities of color bore the brunt of essential work during the crisis, risking exposure to the virus.
ABC News
January 19, 2021
Education researchers said the pandemic teaching shortage would likely intensify learning disparities, especially in high-poverty schools where experienced substitutes often choose not to work.
“It’s a disaster. Those kids who have already got the worst of Covid and its consequences are the ones who are going to face a larger lack of sufficient, and sufficiently qualified, teachers,” said Emma Garcia, an education economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington. “It’s going to have negative consequences immediately and it’s going to take them longer to be able to catch up.”
New York Times
January 19, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute forecasts a dire picture if federal aid to state and local governments isn’t secured: over 5 million jobs will be lost by the end of 2021.
Common Dreams
January 19, 2021
In a recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found no progress since 1968 in how Black people fare in comparison with whites when it comes to homeownership, unemployment, and incarceration.
ABC4-TV
January 19, 2021
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute estimates that nearly a quarter (22.7%) of Wisconsin’s workforce would be affected by a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
January 19, 2021
Still, economic research in recent years has changed the outlook for some by indicating that it doesn’t have a significant impact on employment, said David Cooper, senior economic Analyst at the Economic Policy Institute.
“That has muted a lot of opposition among folks who may have been opposed, not for ideological reasons, but because they thought the policy did more harm than good,” Cooper said. “I’ve seen companies coming out and supporting it too. Part of that is because there’s broader support for the idea that raising the minimum wage gives additional dollars to go out and spend.”
Bloomberg
January 19, 2021
But the challenges he — and, ultimately, Biden — face are daunting. Even before the pandemic, income inequality was soaring, with earnings rising much more quickly at the top. And now nearly 16 percent of workers are either unemployed or working fewer hours than they were before, many of them Black and Latino, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Boston Globe
January 19, 2021
States and local government, meanwhile, could be forced to further cut their already strained budgets to make up for losses in tax revenue.
“Without more aid they will have to make more cuts, and cut services and that will disproportionately affect lower income families and communities,” said Heidi Shierholz, who served as chief economist for the Labor Department during the Obama administration and is now at the Economic Policy Institute. She said comprehensive aid for state and local governments and additional benefits for the unemployed should be the priority in the next round of measures.
Bloomberg
January 19, 2021
In Greenville County, monthly child care costs are just shy of $500 for one child, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And the annual average cost of infant care in South Carolina is about $7,000, which is one of the lowest rates in the U.S.
Money Magazine
January 19, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute said the actual situation is even worse than indicated by official figures, estimating that 26.8 million workers have lost their jobs or seen their hours cut due to the pandemic.
World Socialist Website
January 15, 2021
“As we build out of the pandemic, the question is going to be: Do we build toward a more equitable economy where workers have a voice, where they have leverage to get wage increases that are long overdue?” said Celine McNicholas, the director of government affairs at the Economic Policy Institute. “Or are we kind of returning to a system where you have low union coverage, very little worker voice, worker power, workers are not sharing in wage increases as productivity increases, and they’re working in unsafe conditions without many protections.”
The Washington Post
January 15, 2021
The need across the nation is extreme, with Covid-19 cases rising and the U.S. death toll nearing 390,000. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted Thursday that “another 1.2 million people applied for Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 965,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 284,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).”
“There are now 26.8 million workers who are either unemployed, otherwise out of work because of the virus, or have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic,” Heidi Shierholz, EPI senior economist and director of policy, explained in a blog post for the think tank. “Further, we started losing jobs again in December; layoffs are rising and the virus is surging.”
Common Dreams
January 15, 2021
The outbreak of Covid-19 sent the unemployment rate skyrocketing. Front-line workers stepped up to ensure Americans stayed healthy, teachers adapted to online teaching, and businesses provided innovative services to stay afloat. As of July 2020, 24.5 million Americans were unemployed or otherwise out of work following the outbreak of the pandemic, the Economic Policy Institute reported. One in four workers have had difficulty paying their bills during the pandemic, according to August data from Pew Research Center. Over the summer, the economy was slowly bouncing back. The United States added 9.3 million jobs by July, MarketWatch reported.
Forbes
January 15, 2021
Past research from the Brookings Institution and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has shown that infrastructure investment can boost the economy. The EPI paper found that the return on infrastructure investment is large and could boost productivity.
Daily Caller
January 15, 2021
The EITC is a refundable tax credit available to low-income families who have income from work. According to research presented by the Economic Policy Institute, the program “dramatically reduces child poverty, encourages single mothers to participate in the formal economy, and has important positive effects on a range of health, educational, and child developmental outcomes.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 15, 2021
These victories can be celebrated, but the struggle continues. Applying the Congressional Budget Office Consumer Price Index updated to 2024, the Economic Policy Institute projects that the cost of living in all but 3 states will require a wage of at least $15 an hour and as high as $20-$25 in many states. This includes Pennsylvania where currently the minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. Is it any wonder that Philadelphia has the highest poverty rate of any major city in the country? Isn’t it clear why food insecurity is a common problem in the U.S., when food costs have nearly doubled over the past 10 years, but wages remain stagnant and at a poverty level?
Mundo Obrero Workers World
January 15, 2021
By the Economic Policy Institute’s count, 26.8 million Americans have lost work or are currently out of work due to Covid-19.
Courthouse News Service
January 15, 2021