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A note from EPI's Kirstyn Flood: Last Friday’s jobs report was described as “a waking nightmare” by EPI Senior Economist Elise Gould because it exposed the harsh reality of unemployment during the coronavirus crisis: More than 20 million jobs lost in April—the highest rate since the Great Depression. For so many of us, the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy and our daily lives is hard to process. EPI experts are here to provide analysis focused on a direction forward to ultimately lessen the economic blow on workers throughout the country.
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EPI's Elise Gould writes: After a sharp fall in March, payroll employment dropped like a rock in April. I struggle to even put into words how large this drop is. It’s as if all the gains in employment since 2000 were wiped out. Total job losses over the last two months would fill all 30 currently empty Major League Baseball stadiums 16 times over. It’s as if all the jobs in all of the states beginning with the letter “M” simply disappeared in the last month. That’s all the jobs in Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana combined.
The job losses in April were far more widespread than the job losses in March. There were acute losses in leisure and hospitality (-7.7 million), education and health services (-2.5 million), professional and business services (-2.1 million), retail trade (-2.1 million), manufacturing (-1.3 million), and other services (-1.3 million). Read the economic indicator »
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A waking nightmare: Jobs report shows 20.5 million jobs lost in April
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The CARES Act, the $2 trillion-plus package to provide economic relief and recovery from the coronavirus shock in early April, was for many reasons deeply imperfect. But the modifications the CARES Act made to the nation’s unemployment insurance (UI) system are an utterly crucial lifeline for tens of millions of American workers. Besides temporarily expanding the eligibility criteria for who qualifies for unemployment benefits through the end of the year and providing an additional 13 weeks of state UI benefits, the CARES Act also provided an extra $600 per week in UI payments through the end of July. Read the blog post »
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In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Congress has now passed four separate relief and recovery measures allocating trillions of dollars in aid, but none have provided meaningful protections to working people. Workers continue to be required to work without protective gear. Sick workers continue to lack access to paid sick leave. And when workers try and speak up for themselves and each other, they are fired. Workers are dying as a result. Read the blog post »
EPI Policy Associate Margaret Poydock explains how executive agencies are taking measures under President Trump to undercut protections for millions of workers. Watch the video »
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As the next round of legislative relief and recovery packages are debated, federal aid to state and local governments has emerged as a high priority. This aid is absolutely crucial for avoiding a deep and prolonged recession.
Key takeaways:
- Congress should prioritize federal aid to state and local governments in the next relief and recovery legislation.
- New estimates show that the economic shock of the coronavirus could lead to a revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021 for state and local governments.
- Unemployment is forecast to be quite elevated even by the end of 2021, and so federal aid should continue as long as economic conditions warrant, and not be set by arbitrary timelines. Read the blog post »
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This year’s National Teacher Appreciation Week happened under the unprecedented hardships that the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed on us. The health emergency forced the closing of schools all over the country, sending over 55 million K‒12 students and about four million teachers home for the remainder of the school year.
But amidst the pain so many are enduring is a bright spot: Some teachers feel the appreciation is deeper than ever before.
With so much at stake in the aftermath of this crisis, this can be an opportunity to turn that appreciation into the fuel that will finally restore the prestige of the teaching profession and improve teachers’ working conditions. Read the blog post »
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EPI's Jhacova Williams writes: As I awoke today, preparing myself for another workday by listening to music, one of my favorite songs, “Foldin Clothes” by J. Cole, had me “feeling like best version of me so happy,” just one of the great lyrics from the rap song.
Why was I so happy? I got an email from the D.C. Board of Elections describing voting procedures that were much easier than in my home state of Louisiana, which recently passed an election plan that limits who has access to mail-in ballots. The email invited me, a new resident to Washington, to request a mail-in ballot for the 2020 election cycle, which could be done one of six ways: online, email, fax, mail, phone, or in person. Read the blog post »
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Join former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on May 13 at 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT for a discussion of The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. In his new book, Reich, an Economic Policy Institute founder, explores America’s power system that he says is designed to bail out corporations rather than people, even in times of crisis. Corporations and the wealthy few benefit from what he calls a socialism for the rich—in which they hold nearly all of the country’s economic and political power—while everyone else is left to endure the harsh realities of capitalism. Register for the webinar »
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EPI President Thea Lee will join a panel of experts on May 27 at 8 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. MT for a discussion of life after the current economic crisis and what we must do about it. Join Lee, Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, and Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist, historian, and philosopher, to hear their projections of how the crisis will unfold in the months and years to come. This webinar is a part of the Just Transition Listening Project, launched by the Labor Network for Sustainability and partners. Register for the webinar »
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How Chris Hayes Makes Sense of the “World-Historical Cataclysm”
Before the coronavirus pandemic reshaped media priorities, along with just about everything else, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes was spending most of his time covering the Democratic presidential nomination and the transformation of the Democratic Party, of which Hayes himself was arguably a harbinger. Read more »
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EPI News: Extra $600 in unemployment needs to be extended to mitigate economic shock
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