According to CNBC, the jobless rate for Black workers overall dropped from 6.2% in January to 6% in February. Although Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, indicated that the full effect of the government layoffs is not yet reflected in the data and that unemployment numbers are generally volatile from one month to the next, the positive numbers for Black men cannot be ignored.
Black Enterprise
March 10, 2025
Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, agreed. For a single month, she said, the household survey is less reliable.
“When the surveys tell a different story, we got to take the payroll survey — give that more weight because of the sample size,” she said.
But, she said, over time, “the household survey can’t be ignored. Sometimes the household survey is better at predicting changes in the business cycle. It might find softening sooner,” she said.
Marketplace
March 10, 2025
To be sure, the unemployment data for February comes amid a push from President Donald Trump and Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the federal workforce. The full impact of those cuts have yet to unfold, and further uncertainties around the direction of the U.S. economy and tariff decisions could affect hiring, according to Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” she said. “We’re not seeing the layoffs in the data yet, for the most part.”
CNBC
March 10, 2025
But the report also shows 10,000 jobs were lost last month in the federal government. And Elise Gould, who’s with the Economic Policy Institute, says that’s just the beginning as this administration aims for a much sharper downsizing of the federal workforce.
ELISE GOULD: So this is really the tip of the iceberg, this loss of 10,000 federal jobs. Many more to come. It seems like that is an unfortunate reality we’ll be looking at in coming months.
NPR
March 10, 2025
Top executives are also becoming increasingly richer. CEO compensation rose 1,085% between 1978 and 2023 compared to a 24% increase in compensation for the typical worker, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In 2023, CEOs received 290 times as much compensation as a typical worker. In 1965, CEOs received only 21 times as much.
Marketplace
March 10, 2025
One area that still has a shortage is bus drivers. A November report from the Economic Policy Institute found that despite having been alleviated slightly in the last year, the bus driver shortage remains severe.
NJ Spotlight
March 6, 2025
January 2025 report from the Economic Policy Institute points out that in the South “incarceration rates are the highest, prison wages are lowest, and forced labor arrangements bear the most striking resemblances to past forms of convict leasing and debt peonage.” The report shows that states in the American South “incarcerate people at the highest rates in the world.”
Counterpunch
March 6, 2025
According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 150,000 federal government employees who stand to be affected by workforce reduction efforts live in Florida, including roughly 17,000 in the Orlando metro area alone.
Orlando Weekly
March 6, 2025
Some observers took a more critical view of the turn of events. “The Maximus story is a cautionary tale of what happens when taxpayer dollars are spent on a firm hell-bent on violating workers’ rights,” said Celine McNicholas, director of policy and general counsel at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “Maximus has enjoyed a $6 billion contract with few, if any, strings attached to it — [the Biden] administration could have walked from this contract. Some things are just worth the fight,” she said.
Capital & Main
March 6, 2025
According to numbers provided by the Economic Policy Institute, Ohio has nearly 81,000 workers employed by the federal government, based on U.S. Census and other data.
Dayton Daily News
March 6, 2025