Thread by @hshierholz

Another 1.5 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) last week. That includes 837,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 650,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. 1/ dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

A reminder: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. It provides up to 39 weeks of benefits but is set to expire at the end of this year. 2/

The 1.5 million who applied for UI last week was unchanged from the prior week. Note: CA has shut down all new UI claims while they prepare an updated identity verification system to combat fraud, but DOL adjusted for that in their published numbers. 3/
losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/09/19/edd…

Note, UI fraud is not about individuals filing a one or two fraudulent claims, but sophisticated schemes involving extensive identity theft and the overriding of security systems. No great surprise—UI agencies are often working on computer systems that are decades old. 4/

So one take-home in all this is that we need to invest heavily in the technology of our UI systems. 5/

Most states provide 6 months of regular benefits—and the recession started more than 6 months ago. That means many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data, continuing claims for regular state UI dropped by almost a million. 6/

The good news is that after an individual exhausts regular state benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of regular state UI (and is only available to people who were on regular state UI). 7/

Available data reported by DOL indicate that right now, a total of 28.0 million workers are either receiving unemployment benefits or have applied recently and are waiting to get approved. 8/

🛑But MAJOR caution here.🛑The above chart is a substantial overestimate. For one thing, initial claims for regular state UI & PUA should be nonoverlapping—that is how DOL wants agencies to report them—but some folks may be erroneously counted as being in both programs. 9/

And some states are including retroactive payments in their continuing PUA claims, which would also lead to double counting. This story has good info on that. 10/ nytimes.com/2020/09/16/bus…

Finally, as mentioned earlier in this thread, creaky UI systems have also been the target of highly sophisticated fraud, which adds to claims numbers. 11/

Soooo, nobody knows exactly how many people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits right now. This is yet another reminder that we need to invest heavily in our data infrastructure and technology. 12/

This chart shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for Sept 12). Continuing claims are more than 25 million above where they were a year ago. (But use caution interpreting trends over time for the last 6 mos b/c of reporting issues.) 13/

Republicans in the Senate allowed the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly UI benefits to expire at the end of July. Last week was the ninth week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not get the extra $600. 14/

That means most people on UI are now are forced to get by on around 40% of their pre-virus earnings. It goes without saying that most folks can’t exist on 40% of prior earnings without experiencing a sharp drop in living standards and enormous pain. 15/

This is a great piece from @LilyRoberts12 and @Just_Schweitzer showing that there is *nowhere* a worker can afford to live on unemployment insurance alone. 16/
americanprogress.org/issues/economy…

In early August, Trump issued an executive memorandum that was supposed to give recipients an extra $300 or $400 in benefits, but in reality even this drastically reduced benefit is delayed, is only available for a few weeks, and is not available at all for many. 17/

This chart from @TCFdotorg shows how much less in benefits people are getting under Trump’s executive memorandum than they did under the across-the-board $600 benefit. 18/ tcf.org/content/report…

Blocking the $600 is terrible economics. The $600 was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who now have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting 5.1 million jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs. 19/ epi.org/blog/cutting-o…

The labor market is still 12.7 million jobs below where we would be if the recession hadn’t happened. Now is not the time to cut benefits that support jobs. 20/ epi.org/blog/what-to-w…

But what about the supposed work disincentive effect of the $600? Rigorous empirical studies show that any work disincentive effect of the $600 was so minor that it *cannot even be detected.* 21/ dropbox.com/s/q0kcoix35jxt… news.yale.edu/2020/07/27/yal…

Case in point: in May/June/July —with the $600 in place—9.2 MILLION people went back to work. A large share of those were making more on UI than they had made at their prior job, but it did not keep them from going back. A job offer is too valuable. 22/

Further, there are 8.3 million more unemployed workers than job openings, meaning millions will remain jobless no matter what they do. Blocking the $600 cannot incentivize people to get jobs that are not there. 23/ epi.org/chart/economic…

Cutting the $600 is also exacerbating racial inequality. Due to the impact of historic & current systemic racism, Black and Brown workers have seen more job loss in this pandemic, and have less wealth to fall back on. They are being hurt worse by the expiration of the $600. 24/

And a final reminder: People haven’t just lost their jobs. An estimated 12 million workers and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to COVID. 25/ epi.org/publication/he… @joshbivens_DC @benzipperer

And here's this tweet thread in a blog post. epi.org/blog/with-mill…