Media clips

• Even with higher pay and signing bonuses, public schools struggle to hire bus drivers and cafeteria workers

  Public schools have been struggling to fill support staff positions since the Great Recession decimated the workforce in the mid-2000s, and the pandemic has made things worse. If hiring kept pace with enrollment, public K-12 education employment today would be 8.6% higher than fall 2008 levels. Instead, it’s down 5.3%, according to a new report released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, interpreting data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

  Fortune February 11, 2022
• Bloomberg Balance of Power

  “Our models were all wrong,” says former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz. 

  Bloomberg TV February 11, 2022
• Why The Middle-Class Is Disappearing

  Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, shares that sentiment. “It’s not that the economy got worse, it was that there were policy decisions made so that the economic growth did not filter down to the vast majority.”

  CNBC February 11, 2022
• Report: Raising Pay Key to Keeping Schools Open

  As school districts across Colorado struggle to keep their doors open because of staffing shortages, a new Economic Policy Institute report suggests that states should tap billions in unspent COVID relief funds to make long-overdue investments in the education workforce.

  Public News Service February 11, 2022
• “A PURE SIDESHOW”: NOW MORE THAN EVER, THE STOCK MARKET DOESN’T MATTER

  So unless you’re C-suite executive with tons of stock (or are nearing retirement age and have made extremely risky decisions with your savings), a stock market plunge generally won’t be bad for you. And it also probably wouldn’t be good for you. “If you don’t have much wealth,” says Josh Bivens, director of research at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, the stock market is “a pure sideshow for your own economic circumstance.”

  The Intercept February 11, 2022
• The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record last year.

  “It’s devastating,” said Robert E. Scott, the director of trade and manufacturing policy research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which has called for more dramatic action to reduce the trade deficit, like realigning the value of the dollar. He added that the trade deficit was “draining jobs away from the recovery.”

  New York Times February 11, 2022
• More cities seek to redress widespread 20th-century destruction of Black neighborhoods

  Historian Richard Rothstein, a housing policy expert at the Economic Policy Institute, draws a direct line between discriminatory government housing policies of the 20th century and the low Black homeownership rates in the United States today.

  Washington Post February 11, 2022
• Here’s what makes a jobs report ‘shocking’
  I’ve talked about previous reports with Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, including what we do and do not learn from these reports. She said they need to be viewed as pieces of information, not the full picture, in part because the surveys can overstate things and miss the changing composition of the workforce.
  CNN February 11, 2022
• Congress just passed an extremely important bill protecting victims of sexual misconduct

  Cites EPI graph on arbitration and litigation. 

  VOX February 11, 2022
• Why do CEOs get paid so much?

  CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978: CEOs were paid 351 times as much as a typical worker in 2020 from the Economic Policy Institute

  Marketplace February 11, 2022