No improvement in initial unemployment claims as labor market gains falter

Another 1.1 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 742,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 320,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). The 1.1 million who applied for UI last week was an increase of 55,000 from the prior week’s figures. Last week was the 35th straight week total initial claims were greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week were still 3.3 times where they were a year ago.)

Most states provide 26 weeks of regular benefits, but this crisis has gone on much longer than that. That means many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data, continuing claims for regular state UI dropped by 429,000, from 6.8 million to 6.4 million.

For now, after an individual exhausts regular state benefits, they can move on to Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of regular state UI. However, PEUC is set to expire on December 26 (as is PUA).

In the latest data available for PEUC (the week ending October 31), PEUC rose by 233,000, from 4.1 million to 4.4 million, offsetting only about 60% of the 383,000 decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits for the same week. This is likely due in large part to the fact that many of the roughly 2 million workers who were on UI before the recession began, or who are in states with less than the standard 26 weeks of regular state benefits, are exhausting PEUC benefits at the same time others are taking it up. More than 1.5 million workers have exhausted PEUC so far (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). Last week, 634,000 workers were on Extended Benefits (EB), which is a program that eligible unemployed workers in some states can get on if they’ve exhausted PEUC.

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data are for October 31). Continuing claims are nearly 19 million above where they were a year ago.

Figure A

Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–October 31, 2020: *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*

Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
2019-03-23 1,905,627 31,510
2019-03-30 1,858,954 31,446
2019-04-06 1,727,261 30,454
2019-04-13 1,700,689 30,404
2019-04-20 1,645,387 28,281
2019-04-27 1,630,382 29,795
2019-05-04 1,536,652 27,937
2019-05-11 1,540,486 28,727
2019-05-18 1,506,501 27,949
2019-05-25 1,519,345 26,263
2019-06-01 1,535,572 26,905
2019-06-08 1,520,520 25,694
2019-06-15 1,556,252 26,057
2019-06-22 1,586,714 25,409
2019-06-29 1,608,769 23,926
2019-07-06 1,700,329 25,630
2019-07-13 1,694,876 27,169
2019-07-20 1,676,883 30,390
2019-07-27 1,662,427 28,319
2019-08-03 1,676,979 27,403
2019-08-10 1,616,985 27,330
2019-08-17 1,613,394 26,234
2019-08-24 1,564,203 27,253
2019-08-31 1,473,997 25,003
2019-09-07 1,462,776 25,909
2019-09-14 1,397,267 26,699
2019-09-21 1,380,668 26,641
2019-09-28 1,390,061 25,460
2019-10-05 1,366,978 26,977
2019-10-12 1,384,208 27,501
2019-10-19 1,416,816 28,088
2019-10-26 1,420,918 28,576
2019-11-02 1,447,411 29,080
2019-11-09 1,457,789 30,024
2019-11-16 1,541,860 31,593
2019-11-23 1,505,742 29,499
2019-11-30 1,752,141 30,315
2019-12-07 1,725,237 32,895
2019-12-14 1,796,247 31,893
2019-12-21 1,773,949 29,888
2019-12-28 2,143,802 32,517
2020-01-04 2,245,684 32,520
2020-01-11 2,137,910 33,882
2020-01-18 2,075,857 32,625
2020-01-25 2,148,764 35,828
2020-02-01 2,084,204 33,884
2020-02-08 2,095,001 35,605
2020-02-15 2,057,774 34,683
2020-02-22 2,101,301 35,440
2020-02-29 2,054,129 33,053
2020-03-07 1,973,560 32,803
2020-03-14 2,071,070 34,149
2020-03-21 3,410,969 36,758
2020-03-28 8,158,043 52,494 48,963
2020-04-04 12,444,309 3,802 68,897 64,201
2020-04-11 16,249,334 31,392 210,939 89,915
2020-04-18 17,756,054 59,760 1,088,281 116,162
2020-04-25 21,723,230 86,972 3,498,790 158,031
2020-05-02 20,823,294 171,580 6,226,074 175,289
2020-05-09 22,725,217 232,057 7,929,418 216,576
2020-05-16 18,791,926 233,288 11,095,269 226,164
2020-05-23 19,022,578 534,958 9,761,879 247,595
2020-05-30 18,548,442 1,093,338 9,392,718 259,499
2020-06-06 18,330,293 867,226 11,067,905 325,282
2020-06-13 17,552,371 769,155 12,853,484 336,537
2020-06-20 17,316,689 850,461 13,870,617 392,042
2020-06-27 16,410,059 936,726 12,008,146 373,841
2020-07-04 17,188,908 940,001 13,179,377 495,296
2020-07-11 16,221,070 1,055,778 13,008,659 513,141
2020-07-18 16,691,210 1,155,692 12,956,006 518,584
2020-07-25 15,700,971 1,223,255 10,717,042 609,328
2020-08-01 15,112,240 1,289,125 11,212,827 433,416
2020-08-08 14,098,536 1,407,802 10,957,527 549,603
2020-08-15 13,792,016 1,393,314 13,550,916 469,028
2020-08-22 13,067,660 1,422,483 14,656,297 523,430
2020-08-29 13,283,721 1,527,166 14,467,064 490,514
2020-09-05 12,373,201 1,631,645 11,510,888 529,220
2020-09-12 12,363,489 1,806,241 11,828,338 510,610
2020-09-19 11,561,158 1,959,953 11,394,832 589,652
2020-09-26 10,172,332 2,786,333 11,172,335 579,582
2020-10-03 8,952,580 3,296,156 10,152,753 668,691
2020-10-10 8,038,175 3,683,496 10,324,779 614,875
2020-10-17 7,436,321 3,983,613 9,332,610 778,746
2020-10-24 6,837,941 4,143,389 9,433,127 746,403
2020-10-31 6,454,659 4,376,847 8,681,647 806,462
ChartData Download data

The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel.

Caution: Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their payment.

Click here for notes.

Data are not seasonally adjusted. A full list of programs can be found in the bottom panel of the table on page 4 at this link: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf.

Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Initial Claims [ICSA], retrieved from Department of Labor (DOL), https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/persons.xls and https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf, November 19, 2020.

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Senate Republicans allowed the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly UI benefits to expire at the end of July, so last week was the 16th week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not get the extra $600. And worse, as mentioned above, PUA and PEUC will expire in just over five weeks, on December 26—unless Congress acts. Millions of workers are depending on these programs—DOL reports that a total of 13.1 million workers were on PUA (8.7 million) or PEUC (4.4 million) during the week ending October 31. When these programs expire, millions of these workers and their families will be financially devastated.

An excellent new paper from The Century Foundation finds that 12 million workers will lose PUA or PEUC benefits when they expire on December 26—on top of the 4.4 million who will have exhausted them before then. It also finds that only 2.9 million will then be eligible for Extended Benefits. That means a total of 13.5 million workers (12.0 million + 4.4 million – 2.9 million) will have lost CARES Act unemployment benefits by the end of the year with nothing to fill in the gap.

The House passed a $2.2 trillion relief package that would extend the UI provisions in the CARES Act, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has thus far blocked additional COVID relief, knowing full well that millions will see their benefits disappear on December 26 if he doesn’t act. The cruelty is beyond belief.

And blocking more COVID relief is not just cruel, it’s bad economic policy. UI is great stimulus. The spending made possible by pandemic UI benefits is supporting millions of jobs. Letting these benefits expire means cutting those jobs. There are now 25.7 million workers who are officially unemployed, otherwise out of work because of the virus, or have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic. And job growth is slowing. Stimulus is desperately needed.

Blocking stimulus is also exacerbating racial inequality. Due to the impact of historic and current systemic racism, Black and Latinx communities have seen more job loss in this recession, and have less wealth to fall back on. The lack of stimulus hits these workers the hardest, which means stimulus is a racial justice issue. Further, workers in this pandemic aren’t just losing their jobs—millions of workers and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to the COVID-19 downturn. Senate Republicans are failing struggling families.