Another 1.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) last week. That includes 840,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 464,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. 1/ dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
The 1.3 million who applied for UI last week was a decline of 53,000 from the prior week’s revised figures. 2/
Last week was the 29th straight week total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession (GR). If you restrict to regular state claims (b/c we didn’t have PUA in the GR), initial claims are still greater than the 3rd-worst week of the GR. 3/
Most states provide six months of regular benefits, and October is the eighth month of this crisis. That means many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data, continuing claims for regular state UI dropped by more than a million. 4/
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). 5/
However, in the latest data available for PEUC, (the week ending September 19,) PEUC rose by 154,000, offsetting less than 20% of the of the 802,000 decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits for the same week. 6/
The relatively small increase in PEUC relative to the decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits is due either to people finding work, or delays getting on to PEUC. 7/
Available data reported by DOL indicate that right now, a total of 26.7 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/
But the bigger issue is that states are including retroactive payments in their continuing PUA claims, which would also lead to double counting. 10/ nytimes.com/2020/09/16/bus…
That means nobody knows exactly how many people are receiving unemployment insurance benefits right now— another reminder that we need to invest heavily in our data infrastructure and technology. 11/
This chart shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for Sept 19). Continuing claims are more than 24 million above where they were a year ago. (But use caution interpreting trends over time since March b/c of reporting issues.) 12/
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 tenth week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not receive the extra $600. 13/
On Tuesday, President Trump ordered his negotiators to stop top talks with Democratic leaders on another stimulus package. If that move holds, it means the extra $600 is not coming back anytime soon. 14/ bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
This is terrible economics. The $600 was supporting a huge amount of spending by people who, without it, have to make drastic cuts. The spending made possible by the $600 was supporting millions of jobs. Cutting that $600 means cutting those jobs. 15/ epi.org/blog/cutting-o…
The labor market is still more than 12 million jobs below where we would be if the recession hadn’t happened, and job growth is slowing. Now is not the time to cut off stimulus talks. 16/ epi.org/press/slowdown…
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.* 17/ dropbox.com/s/q0kcoix35jxt… news.yale.edu/2020/07/27/yal…
Further, there are 6.6 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. 18/ epi.org/blog/the-job-o…
Cutting the $600 is also exacerbating racial inequality. Due to the impact of historic & current systemic racism, Black and Latinx workers have seen more job loss in this pandemic, and have less wealth to fall back on. The lack of stimulus hits these workers the hardest. 19/
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. 20/ epi.org/publication/he…
And like UI-clockwork, here is this tweet thread in blog post form, if useful. epi.org/blog/1-3-milli…
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