From the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.epi.org/):
A note from EPI’s Kirstyn Flood: Without federal aid to state and local governments, millions of jobs in the public sector will be lost by the end of 2021, severely impacting Black workers, women, and veterans, who are disproportionately employed in these jobs. Additional jobs will be lost—in both the private and public sectors—if Congress fails to reinstate the $600 weekly unemployment benefit that expired last week. EPI experts weigh in on what could happen if Congress fails to act to prevent further economic shock.
The coronavirus shock was historically large—and the bounceback has already likely stalled
Commerce department data released last week confirmed what everybody already knew: Gross domestic product collapsed faster in the second quarter of 2020 than it has in any other recorded quarter of U.S. history. These data show the utterly enormous scale of recovery the economy needs to mount before it is anywhere close to healthy. And the reality may be even worse: The quarterly data mask important intra-quarter trends, and they miss troubling developments in the month of July, which we won’t see until the next quarterly data release. Congress and the president need to restore the extra $600 in unemployment insurance, for as long as the job market remains damaged, and need to provide large-scale, flexible aid to state and local governments to keep the coming revenue shortfalls facing these governments from translating into spending cuts and austerity that will starve U.S. households of needed help and drag on recovery in coming months. Read the economic indicator »
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