Last week, 2.2 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the twelfth week in a row that unemployment claims have been more than twice the *worst* week of the Great Recession. 1/ dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
TWELVE WEEKS. Let that sink in. For those who have all lost track of time, that is almost three months. 2/
Of the 2.2 million workers who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.5 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (not seasonally adjusted), and 0.7 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. 3/
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance (UI), like the self-employed. Note: if I counted correctly, at this point only 42 states and Puerto Rico are reporting PUA claims. 4/
How is it that we are seeing large numbers of initial unemployment claims now, when the jobs report from last Friday shows we added jobs in May? One key thing is the fact that the unemployment benefits numbers don’t account for changes in hiring. 5/
If there are a lot of layoffs, you can still have job growth if there is also a lot of hiring. Further, some unemployment claims in May or June may be from people who lost their job before that but didn’t apply right away (perhaps b/c they couldn’t get through the system). 6/
Note, we shouldn’t be looking at the cumulative number of initial regular state UI claims over the last 12 weeks as a measure of how many people are out of work because of the virus. It ignores PUA (so is an understatement on that front), but overstates things in other ways. 7/
Here’s what we should do instead (bear with me). A total of 18.9 mill workers had made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing (known as “continued” claims) by May 30, and 3.2 million have filed initial regular state UI claims on top of that. 8/
And another 9.7 million workers had made it through at least the first round of PUA processing by May 23, and 2.8 million have filed initial PUA claims on top of that. 9/
Yet another 773,000 workers had made it through at least the first round of processing in “other” unemployment compensation programs (like Short-Time Compensation) by May 23, or had filed initial claims in other programs on top of that. 10/
Altogether, that’s 35.4million workers who are either on unemployment benefits, have been approved and are waiting for benefits, or have applied very recently and are waiting to get approved. That is more than one in five workers. 11/
Here’s a chart that pulls this all together, including the most epic note in the history of chart notes—a testament to how tricky these data are to interpret. 12/ 
Note that of the 35.4 million workers claiming unemployment benefits, more than a third are on PUA. This certainly underscores how enormous the gaps are in our regular state unemployment insurance programs. 13/
One note about claims for UI and PUA: they *should* be completely non-overlapping—that is how DOL has directed state agencies to report them—but some states may be misreporting claims, so there may be some double counting. 14/
One question I’ve gotten since the release of the May jobs data last Friday is how do May’s UI claims square with May’s jobs numbers? 15/
I calculate that in mid-May there were 32.5 million workers who were either officially unemployed or were out of work as a result of the virus but were being counted as either employed or out of the labor force. 16/
And on May 16th, there were 30.0 million workers claiming unemployment benefits in all programs except STC. That suggests a very high share of people out of work as a result of the virus are claiming unemployment benefits, though that’s almost surely overstating things. 17/
Why? Well, some part-time workers are receiving benefits, but they aren’t counted in the 32.5 million workers who are either officially unemployed or otherwise out of work as a result of the virus. Also, as I mentioned, there may be some double-counting of benefits claims. 18/
But nevertheless, it does appear that a large share of people who are out of work as a result of the virus are claiming unemployment benefits and that is a very good thing. 19/
But today’s data highlight the deep recession we are now in, and it’s important to remember that this recession is exacerbate existing racial inequalities by causing greater job loss in black households than white households. 20/
Policymakers must do much more. For example, without massive federal aid to state and local governments, 5.3 million workers in the public and private sector will lose their jobs by the end of 2021. 21/ epi.org/blog/without-f…
And we need to extend the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits. It was probably the most effective part of the CARES Act. 22/ epi.org/blog/the-extra…
And we can't turn off federal relief too early. The expiration of relief provisions should be tied to economic conditions. Assigning arbitrary end dates to provisions to sustain the economy makes no sense when there is so much uncertainty about how the recovery will unfold. 23/
Automatic triggers (where provisions phase out as the unemployment rate falls or the employment-to-population ratio rises) would alleviate the very real threat that we turn off federal aid when the economy is still too weak, hamstringing the recovery. 24/
Do you have questions about how today's unemployment insurance claims numbers square with last Friday's monthly employment numbers? This blog post is for you. epi.org/blog/three-mon…
