Today we launched a visual guide to unemployment benefit claims, which we will be updating weekly with each Thursday's data release. The numbers are sobering. A few notes on understanding these figures: 1/ taxfoundation.org/unemployment-i… 
Timing matters a lot. It will take at least another 1-2 weeks to have a strong sense of which states are facing the worst crisis. Right now there are challenges in disentangling timing of closure orders, pace of processing UI claims, reporting lags, from larger considerations. 2/
So, for instance, we know that some states initially couldn't keep pace with the benefit claims coming in. A comparatively modest (nothing is low) increase in those states is hardly good news. 3/
And different states are at different points on the closure curve, or have industries that will respond not only differently but with different timing. 4/
The governor of California has indicated that the state is looking at 1 million new claims over a two week period, but only the first week of that has been reported thus far, with 186,809 claims. If this holds, California will have a MASSIVE spike in claims on the next report. 5/
As we get additional weeks of data, we'll try to find ways to display this in ways that best illustrate the magnitude of the states' challenges and not just the timing of when the claims came in, so this page will continue to evolve. 6/
And of course we will be writing more about the magnitude of the problem... taxfoundation.org/states-prepare… 7/
... and policy considerations for states, as well as producing materials about the federal assistance both for states and to individuals who are laid off. taxfoundation.org/save-small-bus… 8/
This is a very unpleasant thing to write about, because each of these numbers represents a person without a job right now. Generous new UC policies will help, but there's an enormous human cost here. We'll try to do justice to that reality as we continue our analysis. /END
