It has been well documented that fiscal austerity was a catastrophe for the recovery from the Great Recession. New estimates show that without sufficient aid to state and local governments, the COVID-19 shock could lead to a revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021 for state and local governments. In lieu of substantial federal investments, budget cuts are certain. But I, for one, did not expect to see the losses as soon as April. As of the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), state and local government employment fell by 981,000, with the vast majority of losses found in local government. And the majority of those local government losses are in the education sector, with a loss of 468,800 jobs in local public school employment alone. - EPI
Monday, June 22, 2020
Brutal education job losses
You’ve probably seen that many of the billionaires have become even more glutted beyond the dreams of avarice, during the pandemic. There is a long list of far better uses to which that money should be put. If you ask me, preventing this would be #1.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
468,800 is a big number but I wonder if that includes custodial staff, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, etc. It's been decades since I used the BLS data base but I recall that the "education" classification had large numbers of workers that only had a high school degree.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if this might be just an early hit that would have normally occurred during the summer months.
Regardless, this just another reason to contact your Members of Congress to address this ... the Senate's HELP (E is for Education) held a hearing earlier this month to protect against State & Local education cuts and to address the need for additional federal funding amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Here's a link to one request
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/Edu%20GROUP%20funding%20letter%20040620%20FINAL.pdf
At the same time, let's remember that many Republicans have expressed the interest in relieving the federal government of any involvement in funding for education.
EPI is normally quite careful, and I doubt they'd leave themselves open to embarrassingly easy rebuttal. But I don't claim to know for sure.
DeleteThe NEA also has a take on potential job losses.
Deletehttps://educatingthroughcrisis.org/nearly-2-million-education-jobs-could-be-lost-see-your-state-data/