Over the past couple of weeks, I've had a number of media calls on the potential for 'ineligible' CERB applications. These are often backed by anecdotes.

I don't doubt the anecdotes!

But now we have some data from today's LFS, so let's gauge magnitudes....

From @paulvieira we see that 36.7% of the labour force is either out of work, or on reduced (<50%) hours.

The labour force is 18.6MM, so that's 6.8MM. https://twitter.com/paulvieira/status/1258746662195007495

So, 6.8MM are out of work or on <50% of hours.

Some of these are ineligible for CERB because they're earning >$1K. Others are ineligible because they didn't satisfy some requirements.

But let's just take note that 6.8MM have taken a big hit to labour market activity.

Now let's look at CERB. On April 16th (which was partway through the week covered by the LFS), CERB had 6.4MM unique applicants.

@BrendonBernard_ captured this for us. https://twitter.com/BrendonBernard_/status/1251178804674023424

So, we have 6.8MM people taking a big hit to their labour, as of mid-April.

We have 6.4MM on CERB, as of mid-April.

Does this mean there was no 'fraud' or dishonest attestations? No.

But it does mean that the scale of CERB takeups is consistent with hit to the labour market.

@2closetocall cc