More than 90% of domestic workers are women, and about a third are foreign born, according to a recent report from the the Economic Policy Institute. In fact, domestic workers are “twice as likely” as other U.S. employees to come from another country, the EPI notes. Of the 2.2 million, the vast majority work as home health care aides. And more will be needed in the cities that will age the most by 2060.
24/7 Wall St.
December 9, 2022
Poor working conditions are a primary source of the teacher shortage phenomenon, argues a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. The problem isn’t primarily a lack of qualified teachers, it says, but a lack of incentives for those qualified workers to take grueling, underappreciated jobs.
Education Week
December 9, 2022
Some data argues teachers should be looking to remain in unions. An August paper published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says that as teachers’ stress levels rose due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the comfort of their unions were the best resource to alleviate them.
KATV
December 9, 2022
Teaching, though, has been widely viewed as a caretaking profession with unfair compensation, advocates told ABC News. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which lobbies on behalf of the needs of low- and middle-income workers, found the relative pay gap between teachers and similarly educated non-teachers hit a “record” high in 2021.
ABC News
December 9, 2022
Plus, hefty medical bills may be just the beginning, says Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute.
“The poverty rate of people with disabilities is about two-and-a-half times as high as for others, and the share of those with disabilities who have medical debt is about five times as large as for others,” he tells CNBC Make It.
“There’s tons of uncertainty about the long-term health implications of Covid-19, but even a tiny bit of long-term illness/disability risk associated with Covid-19 will have big economic costs,” Bivens adds.
CNBC
December 9, 2022
A report last year by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, estimated that the transition to electric vehicles could cost at least 75,000 U.S. auto industry jobs by 2030 if the government did not provide additional subsidies for domestic production, but could create 150,000 jobs if those subsidies were forthcoming.
…
Josh Bivens, an author of the Economic Policy Institute report, said in an interview that he was pleasantly surprised that the administration managed to pass strong incentives for domestic production of electric vehicles. But whether the incentives will lead to good jobs, he added, is an open question.
“There’s no real explicit subsidy or incentive to make these unionized or even high-wage,” Mr. Bivens said.
The New York Times
December 9, 2022
Meanwhile, the strong headline numbers in the November jobs report masks some weakness in the household survey data, according to Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Overall, data showing the number of people employed in the U.S., the employment-population ratio, and participation rates have all ticked lower for at least three straight months.
If what’s happening in the household survey is a better measure, “then it’s actually showing far more economic distress,” Gould said. “And so that means that people are actually losing their jobs and they’re hurting right now.”
CNBC
December 9, 2022
When people have more money, they spend more. When more money is spent, there is more opportunity for job growth, mitigating the negative effects of raising the minimum wage. In fact, a study from the Economic Policy Institute predicted that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 could create 85,000 new jobs due to growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The Michigan Daily
December 9, 2022
If you’ve ever worked back-of-house at a fast-casual spot or even a full-service restaurant, then you know that restaurant work is some of the most highly demanding — and yet lowest-paid — work out there. According to a 2014 report from the Economic Policy Institute, “by and large, the industry consists of very low-wage jobs with few benefits, and many restaurant workers live in poverty or near-poverty.”
Tasting Table
December 9, 2022
“This is a truly fertile generational shift potentially going on in the labor movement,” says Jennifer Sherer, a labor expert with the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “People who are learning firsthand how to organize unions will take that knowledge into any job they go into in the future.”
Christian Science Monitor
December 9, 2022