Media clips
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Heidi Shierholz, policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, calculated that wages in leisure and hospitality increased at an annualized rate of nearly 18% in the past three months. But she said that mostly just made up for declines in the earlier part of the recession.
“We’ve had a big acceleration in recent months, but in no way are wages out of whack,” she said. “They’re roughly what you would expect if COVID hadn’t happened. They are still extremely low. It’s the lowest wage sector by far in our economy.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune June 2, 2021 -
This much is clear: A California family’s infant care costs average about $17,400 a year, the third highest cost in the nation. The price of child care for a 4-year-old averages about $11,475 annually, according to data from the White House and the Economic Policy Institute, which compiles statistics from several sources.
Fresno Bee June 2, 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, pointed to a caregiving crisis, lingering health fears and low wages as contributing to the restaurant industry’s staffing issues. She added, however, that the sector’s “isolated” labor shortage is “not driving things economy-wide.”
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Some restaurant workers may also still be shell-shocked from the economic and health toll the pandemic took on the industry and its workers seemingly overnight, as their sector bore the brunt of initial job losses while many of their office-working peers had the privilege of continuing work remotely. Finally, wages in leisure and hospitality remain “extraordinarily low, even with the recent acceleration,” Shierholz added, which might not be seen as enough for worker’s to risk their health or pay for alternative childcare.
Shierholz slammed the decisions of some Republican governors to cut back jobless aid because of the labor shortage in the restaurant industry, lamenting how quickly people shifted from calling workers heroes to calling them lazy.
“It’s like we went from, ‘These are essential workers, they’re keeping us going,’” she said. “And now there’s a ‘We are going to make sure that you are so desperate that you have no choice but to take a job, even if it’s dangerous for you, even if wages are very suppressed, even if that means you have an enormous amount of stress and strain added to your life because of trying to cobble together fragmented too-expensive childcare.’”
ABC News June 2, 2021 -
It is unclear how successful cutting off the extra benefits will be at getting people back to work, says Josh Bivens, research director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “These have become a lot less desirable jobs because of the pandemic,” says Bivens. “If someone has to show up in a pretty crowded restaurant, they might not feel great about that still, and I think that’s pretty rational.”
Financial Times June 2, 2021 -
Radical and rising economic inequality is no secret — and now, thanks to new research from the Economic Policy Institute, neither is its price tag nor its cause. There’s never been a study quite like this — one which places specific, real dollar amounts on every trickle-down policy American politicians have embraced. The study’s authors, Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens, explain how their work reveals that the massive upward redistribution of income our nation has suffered these past four decades can largely be attributed to policies intentionally designed to suppress the wages of American workers.
Pitchfork Economics June 2, 2021 -
So what are Republican leaders talking about when they complain about the labor shortage? First, it’s important to understand that they’re not using it as a technical economic term. “There’s no index of labor shortages that [the US Bureau of Labor Statistics] puts out,” Heidi Shierholz, the senior economist and director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, explained in the latest episode of “Pitchfork Economics.”
“The key footprint of a labor shortage in the data is very fast wage growth,” Shierholz explained. “The idea behind that is really straightforward: If an employer can’t attract the workers they need, they will raise wages to poach workers from other employers, who will in turn raise wages to retain their workers, and on and on.”
So is there a labor shortage in our economy? And, if so, should we panic? “While we are not, right now, seeing widespread labor shortages, I do think that the data are indeed flashing labor shortages in very isolated sectors,” Shierholz said. In particular, “it’s pretty much just leisure and hospitality – the sector that has restaurants in it. It’s the lowest-wage major sector in our economy, and that’s where we are seeing some evidence of labor shortages.”
Business Insider June 2, 2021 -
“When employers say they can’t find the workers that they need, always add the phrase, ‘at the wages I want to pay,’” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “We know how to attract workers: give them better jobs, better pay, better working conditions. It’s not rocket science; that’s how you do it.”
New York Times June 2, 2021 -
But progressives are pushing back, questioning the long-held belief that high debts will shift the economy into a lower gear.
The left-leaning Economic Policy institute said the budget “shows what true ‘fiscal responsibility’ means” by making investments to tackle inequality and level the playing field in the labor market.
The Hill June 2, 2021 -
Meanwhile, both the steel and lumber industries are strongly urging Biden to keep the tariffs in place. Removing them could prove to be politically unpopular, especially among steel workers in battleground Rust Belt states.
“Why would you kneecap the domestic steel industry when you want to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure?” asked Rob Scott, senior economist and director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “It would be like taking a sledgehammer to kill a flea.”
Scott argued the steel tariffs effectively supported the industry and that removing them, along with quotas limiting imports, would lead to both a “hemorrhaging of jobs” and importing steel that is in many cases worse for the environment than what is made in America.
CNN Business June 2, 2021 -
“There is nothing sacrosanct, or even formal or legitimate, about the current lottery allocation process,” said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute. “There was no regulation and no transparency or public comment to inform the process.”
Costa expressed skepticism that the Biden administration would implement a measure devised by the Trump administration, but thought the changes would help improve the H-1B program.
According to Costa’s research, outsourcing IT staffing firms continue to get the majority of the 85,000 visas available in the lottery, petitioning for workers receiving a level one or two wage that are marked at the 17th and 33rd percentile wages of a specific job and region, and below the median pay.
Bloomberg Law June 2, 2021