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Heidi Shierholz named President of the Economic Policy Institute

The Economic Policy Institute’s Board of Directors has selected Heidi Shierholz to serve as EPI’s new president.

“As president, I will strengthen EPI’s ability to wield the power of its research and expertise to win real reforms that lead to economic justice for workers, racial justice, and gender equity,” she stresses.
Shierholz was an EPI labor economist from 2007 to 2014 before joining the Obama administration in 2014 as chief economist at the Department of Labor.
She returned to EPI in 2017 to lead its policy team and has been a strong advocate for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, testifying in support of it before Congress. “No other legislation being considered could do more to reverse wage stagnation than the PRO Act,” said Shierholz in a HuffPost profile.
“With a progressive and ambitious administration, this is the moment EPI was created for 35 years ago—a moment when transformative change is possible,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO and interim chair of EPI’s Board of Directors. “Heidi’s vision and depth of experience meets this moment.”

Shierholz succeeds former EPI president Thea M. Lee, who stepped down in May to serve as the deputy undersecretary for international labor affairs in President Biden’s administration. Read the press release | Read Shierholz’s Twitter thread
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Heidi Shierholz named President of the Economic Policy Institute

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What were talking about

‘Other People’s Rotten Jobs Are Bad for Them. And for You.’
“It benefits all of us if the people doing essential work throughout our economy have good jobs, a collective voice and dignified treatment at work,” wrote EPI Senior Fellow Terri Gerstein in an op-ed for the New York Times. “Labor shouldn’t be seen as one more special interest group.” Read the op-ed
‘The Labor Day Graph That Says It All’
On Labor Day, Jacobin featured two EPI charts, highlighting that unions are critical to creating an economy that works for everyone. Read the article | Read EPI’s fact sheet on unions
Disappointing job growth in August as Delta variant surged
“Employment growth was 235,000 in August, slower than in June or July, and likely muted as the spreading Delta variant increased COVID-19 caseloads by fivefold in August,” wrote EPI economist Elise Gould about Friday’s jobs report. Gould talked with Marketplace about the report. Read her analysis | Listen to the segment
Productivity-pay gap reflects ongoing power imbalance in the labor market
The latest update to EPI’s pay-productivity chart shows that, since 1979, productivity has grown 3.5 times as much as pay for the typical worker. Read the blog post
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What were reading

What We Didn’t Know on 9/11
[The 9/11 attacks] distracted everyone’s attention from other looming threats—strategic, political, economic, and especially ecological—that may in the end do us more profound harm than that which was wrought by the terrorists on two airplanes. Read the article
The archaeological treasures that survived 9/11
The discovery of the African Burial Ground [in New York City] in 1991…revealed a brutal picture of slavery in which young, expendable laborers were needed to build an industrial city. Read the article
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Country is ready for economic policy that serves working people, says EPI’s new president
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