Heidi Shierholz, who served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor under President Barack Obama and now runs the nonpartisan labor think tank the Economic Policy Institute, joins us to talk about the BLS, the important data it compiles, and what the hell a revision is.
Crooked Media What A Day Podcast
August 13, 2025
Trump also fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in August, the agency responsible for economic statistics, which was already weakened after years of tight budgets and staff shortages. That’s on top of a budget that “will gut Medicaid, slash food aid for families, and shutter rural hospitals,” says Economic Policy Institute President Heidi Shierholz — all in the name of handouts in the form of tax cuts for the superrich, increasing the national debt by trillions over the next decade while eliminating nearly 6 million jobs by trying to enact the mass deportation of one million people.
In These Times
August 13, 2025
As of September 2024, there were 12.2% fewer school bus drivers in the U.S. than in September 2019, according to Economic Policy Institute.
Shreveport Times
August 13, 2025
Valerie Wilson, a labor economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the modest rise in long-term joblessness could reflect employers getting pickier about hiring as President Donald Trump’s tariff regime changes the cost of doing business.
“People who have been unemployed for longer have clearly had some challenges in getting back into the labor market,” Wilson told HuffPost. “I think that as things have softened, and employers are facing more uncertainty given the sort of chaotic nature of economic policy in this country, that it would be harder for those people to find new jobs.”
Huffpost
August 13, 2025
A new report from economists at the Economic Policy Institute, however, finds the opposite to be true and that the net impact of mass deportation on employment – both for immigrants and U.S. born workers – is decidedly negative.
Indeed, the administration’s goal of deporting one-million people per year will lead to a loss of nearly six million jobs over the coming years – more than forty percent of them held by U.S. born workers.
NC Newsline
August 13, 2025
In reality, research has continually found that conservative policies depress the economy. This includes numerous Trump administration policies like the GOP’s marquee budget bill, passed last month, which the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has estimated will destroy 6 million jobs just through its mass deportation agenda alone — without even mentioning other job losses like the devastating impacts to the health care sector.
“Trump’s announcement makes it clear that he expects the BLS commissioner to only release data that shows the economy is booming — even if it means the data must be manipulated or changed by political appointees,” said EPI’s chief economist Josh Bivens in a statement on Tuesday.
Truthout
August 13, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) raised concerns that the law will incentivize many to work as much overtime as possible to gain the extra income, including evenings and weekends — habits “associated with a range of negative impacts on physical and mental health, well-being, and productivity.”
In addition, those unable to work overtime for personal or health reasons will lose out on the benefits. The EPI called the law “another gimmick that does more harm than good” and suggested that offering workers raises so they don’t have to work the extra hours would prove a better option.
MoneyWise
August 13, 2025
As researchers at the Economic Policy Institute and North Carolina Budget and Tax Center have documented in a pair of recent briefs, the “no taxes on tips” idea benefits comparatively few workers.
Analysis from EPI shows that the law will benefit between 2.5 and 5.2 million tipped workers who will receive an income tax deduction before the policy expires in 2028. The average tax benefit would amount to $1,700 annually during the four years the bill would be in effect. Notably, however, the policy would disproportionately benefit the top 20 percent of all tipped workers, who would receive an average tax cut of over $5,700. Because so many tipped workers have incomes too low to have any federal income tax liability, the bottom 20 percent of all tipped workers would receive an annual average tax cut of just $74.
NC Newsline
August 13, 2025
And because of the severity of cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, the lowest-earning 40% of American households would lose income, on average, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank.
The CT Mirror
August 13, 2025
Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.
Robert Reich Substack
August 13, 2025