The unemployment rate seems an obvious starting point for such a policy discussion.
“That’s where the rubber meets the road for workers,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, and a former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department.
The concept is straightforward: Enhanced unemployment benefits fall in tandem with the unemployment rate, which signals an improved job market.
CNBC
February 22, 2021
It is no secret, Black and brown people with criminal records are stigmatized in a way that prevents them from enjoying the basic rights and privileges we often take for granted. Among them are job opportunities and long-term employment. In mid-2020, the Economic Policy Institute reported that the Black unemployment rate was nearly twice that of the overall unemployment rate in Maryland. The disparity in these figures has remained consistent throughout the pandemic, which shows no sign of slowing down.
Baltimore Sun
February 22, 2021
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said that $15 in 2025 would be an “appropriate” level since it would put a dent in “poverty wages.”
“There is a kind of a large hole that we’ve dug ourselves in having low minimum wages relative to what workers need,” he told Insider. “And so then I think it does make sense to have some kind of gradual set of increases, because you do want to give time for some businesses to accommodate the higher wage schedule.”
Business Insider
February 22, 2021
Before the crisis, families paid two out of three dollars spent for early care and education — the Economic Policy Institute calculated that $42 billion was spent by families out of the total $64 billion spent privately and publicly for this essential service. This crisis showed how unstable that financing system made child care programs on which working families rely.
EdNC
February 22, 2021
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the wage increase would affect nearly one-third of workers in Hinson’s district. She and other members of the House Budget Committee will review the proposal during a hearing on Monday
Iowa Public Radio
February 22, 2021
“You have one swath of the economy getting absolutely slammed and then a huge swath of workers who haven’t seen a decline in pay,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “In a normal recession they’d be helping to keep the economy going but that is not at all the case now.”
Lessons from previous recessions, Ms. Shierholz continued, show that without a concerted effort to provide relief to those hard-hit low-wage workers — particularly by eliminating the subminimum wage for tipped workers — any economic recovery will compound existing wage gaps.
New York Times
February 22, 2021
To read more about the national teacher shortages
The Economic Policy Institute
The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought
Virginia Public Media
February 22, 2021
— Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the Labor Department, “thinks the best answer to how many people are still affected economically by the pandemic is 25.5 million.”
Politico Morning Shift
February 22, 2021
- Counter: “That claim of job loss isn’t supported by evidence — it’s likely an overestimate of negative employment impact. But even if you accept their findings, they still find the benefits far outweigh the costs,” Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Department’s chief economist under Barack Obama, told CBS.
Washington Post
February 22, 2021
The wage hit its peak in inflation-adjusted terms in 1968 at just over $12. Though it has been raised 14 times since then, it has not kept pace with the cost of living. The current nearly 12-year stretch is the longest it’s gone without a boost.
That means minimum wage workers are getting poorer over time, said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“Every year that Congress does not raise it, people get a pay cut,” he said.
CNN
February 22, 2021
Black people also suffer inequities in the labor market. For fifty years now, the unemployment rate of Black people has remained twice the rate of whites. In Washington, D.C., the city where John Thompson and I were born and raised, the jobless rate for Black people was more than six times the rate of whites in 2019. And Black households in 2019 earned just 61 cents on the dollar when compared to white households, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Progressive
February 22, 2021
When Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour in 2018, a move now being debated in Congress for all American workers, some believed it would pressure other companies to lift pay levels as well — particularly rival retailers and warehouse employers.
“This is going to be a big deal for very low-wage workers,” Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based economic think tank said at the time. “It’s going to compel other businesses to raise wages as well.”
Gainesville Times
February 22, 2021
We talked to Celine McNicholas, Director of Government Affairs and Labor Counsel with the Economic Policy Institute, to get the low-down on what we can expect, and dare to hope for.
Dissent Magazine
February 22, 2021
The federal minimum wage is the baseline for employers in the state. A single adult needs to earn $11.76 per hour working full time to meet her basic needs in South Carolina, $4 more than the current minimum wage. According to David Cooper at Economic Policy Institute, the wages of roughly 684,000 South Carolina workers — a third of the state’s workforce — would increase if the state adopted a $15 minimum wage by 2025.
Statehouse Report
February 22, 2021
As David Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, notes in the report, minimum wage hikes result in stronger buying power to workers. In turn, hospitality businesses benefit from the extra purchases. “Tax breaks or deferrals, rent subsidies, expanded lending programs, and other business-oriented relief measures all help firms weather a downturn,” Cooper says, “but they’re not going to drive additional spending in the same way that a minimum wage hike does.”
Mother Jones
February 22, 2021
Of the workers who will benefit from a $15 federal minimum wage hike, 59% are women, with nearly one in four of these women being Black or Latina, reports the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
February 22, 2021
“Because a higher minimum wage lifts up lower-income households — although some middle-income households benefit, too — it is likely to have a stronger effect than many — possibly even most — other recession response measures state and local policymakers might consider,” Dave Cooper, senior economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, said in One Fair Wage’s report.
Restaurant Dive
February 22, 2021
But without hundreds of billions in new federal aid, state and local governments won’t have the money to do that, said Julia Wolfe at the Economic Policy Institute.
“Many of them will be tempted to pursue austerity — the same mistake that they made last time around, in the Great Recession,” Wolfe said, after which it took years to restore public sector employment.
Marketplace
February 22, 2021
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said that $15 in 2025 would be an “appropriate” level since it would put a dent in “poverty wages.”
“There is a kind of a large hole that we’ve dug ourselves in having low minimum wages relative to what workers need,” he told Insider. “And so then I think it does make sense to have some kind of gradual set of increases, because you do want to give time for some businesses to accommodate the higher wage schedule.”
Business Insider
February 22, 2021
According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the wage increase would affect nearly one-third of workers in Hinson’s district. She and other members of the House Budget Committee will review the proposal during a hearing on Monday
Iowa Public Radio
February 22, 2021
To read more about the national teacher shortages
The Economic Policy Institute
The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought
Virginia Public Media
February 22, 2021
- Counter: “That claim of job loss isn’t supported by evidence — it’s likely an overestimate of negative employment impact. But even if you accept their findings, they still find the benefits far outweigh the costs,” Heidi Shierholz, the Labor Department’s chief economist under Barack Obama, told CBS.
Washington Post
February 22, 2021
Black people also suffer inequities in the labor market. For fifty years now, the unemployment rate of Black people has remained twice the rate of whites. In Washington, D.C., the city where John Thompson and I were born and raised, the jobless rate for Black people was more than six times the rate of whites in 2019. And Black households in 2019 earned just 61 cents on the dollar when compared to white households, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
The Progressive
February 22, 2021
As Insider reported last month, research from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute suggests raising the minimum wage would increase income for nearly one in three Black workers. According to the institute, 23% of people who could see a boost in wages would be Black or Latinx women.
Teen Vogue
February 22, 2021
An organizing boom has hit the nonprofit world as workers at numerous legal aid groups, cultural institutions and advocacy organizations ranging from local social service providers to the American Civil Liberties…[paywall].
Law360
February 22, 2021
The Economic Policy Institute estimates raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 “would lift pay for nearly 32 million workers across the country.” According to an EPI study, 32 million workers — or 21% of the workforce — would see a raise if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour. The study also suggests that the increase “would provide an additional $107 billion in wages for the country’s lowest-paid workers,” the average of whom would see an additional $3,300 a year.
Media Matters for America
February 22, 2021
Did low-wage workers lose out in the first period and make gains in the second? Not at all. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, wages for the bottom 10th percentile of US workers rose in the late 1990s, and fell during the years from 2010 to 2014.
FAIR
February 22, 2021
We get some background on forced arbitration and why it matters from previous CounterSpin conversations with Celine McNicholas from the Economic Policy Institute and Joanne Doroshow from the Center for Justice and Democracy.
FAIR Counterspin
February 22, 2021
Trump nominated three “employer-side” members to the NLRB, giving businesses a distinct majority on the five-member board, which currently has one vacant seat. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that Trump’s NLRB members sided with the pro-business Chamber of Commerce in 10 key issue areas, based on a 2017 “wishlist” published by the Chamber. The board also undercut unions’ ability to organize outside of business hours and allowed gig workers to be classified as independent contractors.
Center for Responsive Politics
February 22, 2021