A little thread on CERB and the prospects for false claims....

1/
We have all heard or read the anecdotes about someone's niece or cousin or friend who claimed CERB while not actually being eligible.

These 'fraud' stories are leading some to denigrate the great good that CERB is doing for those who have seen large income losses.

/2
With today's update of the admin data on CERB (and thanks to the feds for putting this online now!), we now see that 7.12M Canadians are on CERB.

Some are worrying about 'fraud.' Well....

/3

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/ei/claims-report.html
How much 'fraud' has their been among the 7.12M CERB applicants?

Friday May 8th will give us a chance to check. Why? On May 8th we get the Labour Force Survey for April.

We can compare the headcount of employment drop and furloughed to the CERB #.

/4

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/dai-quo/cal1-eng.htm
So, when the April LFS is released on May 8th, we can compare the 7.12M CERB headcount to the actual number of people who have been laid off/furloughed.

My *guess* is that the laid off/furloughed headcount will be well north of 6M, suggesting 'fraud' is really not rampant.

/5
What's your guess? What proportion of CERB's 7M recipients will be accounted for by layoffs/furloughs in the April LFS? (The higher the %age, the lower the 'fraud'.)
Note that I am using 'fraud' here loosely to capture different reasons for eligibility attestations that ex-post turn out to be false.

* Good faith errors
* Eligibility rules changes
* Jean Valjean / Les Miserables bread-taking reasons
* outright dishonest attestations.
From @BrendonBernard_ an important note. When the April LFS was in the field, the number of CERB recipients was 6.7M. So, that's the proper denominator for the comparison to the April LFS. https://twitter.com/BrendonBernard_/status/1252276914842226693
See, this is the *exact* sentiment I'm pushing back against. The idea that there is some 'fraud' is used to argue that we shouldn't have made quick payments on the 'trust but verify' model.

When we see the April LFS, we will get a sense of this. https://twitter.com/toshcyoung/status/1253752764468883458
You can follow @kevinmilligan.
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