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Last week, 3.1 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the tenth week in a row that unemployment claims are more than 3 times the *worst* week of the Great Recession. 1/
Of the 3.1 million workers who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.9 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (not seasonally adjusted), and 1.2 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. 2/
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is the new federal program that goes to workers not eligible for regular unemployment insurance (UI), like the self-employed. Note: If I counted correctly, 15 states and the District of Columbia are not yet even reporting PUA claims. 3/
BTW, I don’t think we should be looking at the cumulative number of initial regular state UI claims over the last 10 weeks as a measure of how many people have applied for UI. It ignores PUA (so is an understatement on that front), but may overstate things in other ways. 4/
Here’s what I think we should do instead (bear with me). A total of 19.1 mill workers had made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing (known as “continued” claims) by May 16, and 4.1 million have filed initial regular state UI claims on top of that. 5/
And, 7.8 million workers had made it through at least the first round of PUA processing by May 9th, and 3.3 million have filed initial PUA claims on top of that. 6/
Altogether, that’s 34.2 million workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied very recently and are waiting to get approved. THAT IS MORE THAN ONE IN FIVE WORKERS. Here’s a chart that puts it all together. 7/
And may we never forget that overall numbers mask the fact that recessions do not hit different race & gender groups in the same way, b/c of things like occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labor market disparities. 8/ https://twitter.com/eliselgould/status/1258853052250980352?s=20
Policymakers need to do so much more. For example, a prolonged depression is GUARANTEED without significant federal aid to state and local governments. 9/ https://www.epi.org/blog/a-prolonged-depression-is-guaranteed-without-significant-federal-aid-to-state-and-local-governments/
We also must provide more funding to state UI agencies to hire staff to speed up processing and to make improvements to websites and other administrative infrastructure. 10/
The across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits was probably the most effective part of CARES and should be extended well past its expiration on July 31—at least until unemployment is falling rapidly and is at a manageable level. 11/ https://www.epi.org/blog/the-extra-600-in-unemployment-insurance-has-been-the-best-response-yet-to-the-economic-shock-of-the-coronavirus-and-should-be-extended/
