One year later, unemployment insurance claims remain sky-high

One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said “I have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this.” But in the weeks that followed, things got worse before they got better—and we are not out of the woods yet. Last week—the week ending March 20, 2021—another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.

Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-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 are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.

Figure A

Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–March 6, 2021: *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 0 52,494 48,963
2020-04-04 12,444,309 3,802 69,537 64,201
2020-04-11 16,249,334 31,426 216,481 89,915
2020-04-18 17,756,054 63,720 1,172,238 116,162
2020-04-25 21,723,230 91,724 3,629,986 158,031
2020-05-02 20,823,294 173,760 6,361,532 175,289
2020-05-09 22,725,217 252,257 8,120,137 216,576
2020-05-16 18,791,926 252,952 11,281,930 226,164
2020-05-23 19,022,578 546,065 10,010,509 247,595
2020-05-30 18,548,442 1,121,306 9,597,884 259,499
2020-06-06 18,330,293 885,802 11,359,389 325,282
2020-06-13 17,552,371 783,999 13,093,382 336,537
2020-06-20 17,316,689 867,675 14,203,555 392,042
2020-06-27 16,410,059 956,849 12,308,450 373,841
2020-07-04 17,188,908 964,744 13,549,797 495,296
2020-07-11 16,221,070 1,016,882 13,326,206 513,141
2020-07-18 16,691,210 1,122,677 13,259,954 518,584
2020-07-25 15,700,971 1,193,198 10,984,864 609,328
2020-08-01 15,112,240 1,262,021 11,504,089 433,416
2020-08-08 14,098,536 1,376,738 11,221,790 549,603
2020-08-15 13,792,016 1,381,317 13,841,939 469,028
2020-08-22 13,067,660 1,434,638 15,164,498 523,430
2020-08-29 13,283,721 1,547,611 14,786,785 490,514
2020-09-05 12,373,201 1,630,711 11,808,368 529,220
2020-09-12 12,363,489 1,832,754 12,153,925 510,610
2020-09-19 11,561,158 1,989,499 10,686,922 589,652
2020-09-26 10,172,332 2,824,685 10,978,217 579,582
2020-10-03 8,952,580 3,334,878 10,450,384 668,691
2020-10-10 8,038,175 3,711,089 10,622,725 615,066
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 6,452,002 4,376,847 8,681,647 806,430
2020-11-07 6,037,690 4,509,284 9,147,753 757,496
2020-11-14 5,890,220 4,569,016 8,869,502 834,740
2020-11-21 5,213,781 4,532,876 8,555,763 741,078
2020-11-28 5,766,130 4,801,408 9,244,556 834,685
2020-12-05 5,457,941 4,793,230 9,271,112 841,463
2020-12-12 5,393,839 4,810,334 8,453,940 937,972
2020-12-19 5,205,841 4,491,413 8,383,387 1,070,810
2020-12-26 5,347,440 4,166,261 7,442,888 1,450,438
2021-01-02 5,727,359 3,026,952 5,707,397 1,526,887
2021-01-09 5,446,993 3,863,008 7,334,682 1,638,247
2021-01-16 5,188,211 3,604,894 7,218,801 1,826,573
2021-01-23 5,156,985 4,779,341 7,943,448 1,785,954
2021-01-30 5,003,178 4,062,189 7,685,857 1,590,360
2021-02-06 4,934,269 5,067,523 7,520,114 1,523,394
2021-02-13 4,794,195 4,468,389 7,329,172 1,437,170
2021-02-20 4,808,623 5,456,080 8,387,696 1,465,769
2021-02-27 4,457,888 4,816,523 7,616,593 1,237,929
2021-03-06 4,458,888 5,551,215 7,735,491 1,207,201

 

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, March 25, 2021.

Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website.

The good news in all of this is Congress’s passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill’s UI provisions are set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the bestcase scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.

Agricultural employers are asking the Supreme Court to make it harder for farmworkers suffering from poor pay and working conditions to unionize

In California, union organizers can temporarily access an agricultural employer’s property outside of work hours in order to talk to farmworkers about their legally protected right to join a union. Two agricultural employers, however, contend that the regulation allowing that access is equivalent to an uncompensated and unconstitutional “taking” of their property and should therefore be struck down.

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this dispute: In Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, two agricultural employers are challenging the 1975 California regulation that allows union representatives to visit private farms. The case could have implications for union organizing across the country.

If the challenge by the employers is successful, it will keep the United Farm Workers (UFW) away from their employees, so they won’t be able to organize them. Such a restriction would be particularly egregious given the harsh working conditions farmworkers face and given that a growing share are temporary migrant workers with H-2A visas who live in housing that is either owned or controlled by their employers.

Farmworkers are employed in one of the most hazardous and lowest paying jobs in the entire U.S. labor market, a fact that isn’t often mentioned in the mainstream coverage. As research I coauthored has shown, farmworkers suffer very high rates of wage and hour violations, yet the number of inspections of agricultural employers has been cut in half in recent years, likely due to the U.S. Department of Labor being perennially underfunded by Congress. Since farmworkers are one of the most vulnerable groups in the U.S. workforce, they would benefit enormously from joining a union.

Read more

Three reasons why the PRO Act won’t destroy freelancing or the gig economy

Lately, we have seen criticism of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act centered on what the bill will mean for independent contractors and freelancers.

Despite the fearmongering by business interests and some freelancer groups, the PRO Act will not destroy the gig economy.

Here are three reasons why:

The PRO Act is about giving workers a voice, not taking away freedom.

The PRO Act would expand collective bargaining rights for workers. It would not force any worker to give up their gig or freelance work.

The Act would expand protections under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) to more workers. The NLRA is an 85-year-old law that protects workers’ right to join together to form unions or to engage in concerted efforts to ensure better working conditions. When Congress passed the NLRA it was to “encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses, and the U.S. economy.” The NLRA only covers “employees,” so workers who are deemed independent contractors are not covered, which leads us to the next point.

Read more

Wages are still too low in H-2B occupations: Updated wage rules could ensure labor standards are protected and migrants are paid fairly

Key takeaways:

  • The H-2B program’s wage regulations are allowing employers to legally undercut U.S. wage standards and underpay migrant workers.
  • In all but one of the top 15 H-2B occupations in 2019, the average hourly wage certified nationwide for H-2B workers was lower than the average hourly wage for all workers in the occupation nationwide.
  • One way to fix this would be to require that employers pay H-2B workers at least the highest of the local, state, or national average wage for the occupation. The Biden administration has the legal authority to make these changes, and they should consider doing it quickly in order to protect migrant workers and U.S. wage standards.

Last week, I wrote about how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) are now considering increasing the number of H-2B visas in response to businesses claiming that there are labor shortages in H-2B industries—a claim that unemployment data reveal is false. A related and essential issue to this discussion is the prevailing wage rules that undergird the H-2B program, which exist for the purpose of establishing a minimum, legally required wage that jobs must be advertised at in the United States when recruiting U.S. workers—a requirement before employers can access the H-2B program—in order to determine if there’s a labor shortage. The purpose of the H-2B prevailing wage requirement is also to safeguard U.S. wage standards in H-2B occupations and protect migrant workers from being legally underpaid through visa regulations.

In most cases, since 2015, the DOL’s H-2B wage methodology has required that employers advertise H-2B jobs to U.S. workers at the local average wage for the specific occupation and pay their H-2B employees that wage—according to data from the DOL’s Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey. While at first glance this appears to be a reasonable wage rule, in practice, the available evidence makes clear that the H-2B wage rule is undercutting wage standards at the national level in H-2B occupations and is therefore not consistent with the law establishing the H-2B program.

Read more

The American Rescue Plan clears a path to recovery for state and local governments and the communities they serve

The passage of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) is a watershed moment for state and local governments. It is an opportunity to undo much of the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and begin to address some of the long-standing inadequacies and inequities caused by decades of disinvestment in public services. As our colleague Josh Bivens notes, the bill’s $350 billion in aid to state and local governments will critically help many localities fill in for revenue losses, stem budget cuts, and respond—with important flexibility over the next few years—to massively increased fiscal demands caused by the pandemic.

Although revenue losses in some states were not as dire as predicted early in the pandemic, state and local governments across the country have, nevertheless, already made massive cuts to their budgets and staffs. These cuts have serious implications for the health of local economies and the quality of life in those communities. In this piece, we document the losses that have already occurred in state and local government workforces and take a closer look at who these workers are and what they do. We also discuss the opportunity that policymakers now have to truly “build back better” and what that could mean for communities throughout the country that were struggling long before the coronavirus appeared. In particular, we show that:

  • State and local job cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic have been unprecedented and widespread.
  • Most state and local government employees work in education (50.4%). This workforce also provides public services that keep communities healthy and safe.
  • Women and Black workers are disproportionately represented in state and local government jobs. Women make up 59.6% of this workforce, compared with 46.6% of the private sector. Black women account for 8.7% of state and local government workers, compared with 6.4% of private-sector workers.
  • The American Rescue Plan provides an opportunity for state and local governments to work toward addressing racial inequities and expanding public supports in their communities.

Read more

Hires continue to slow in the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for January

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that, as of the middle of February, the economy was still 9.5 million jobs below where it was in February 2020. This translates into a 11.9 million job shortfall when using a reasonable counterfactual of job growth if the recession hadn’t occurred.

Today’s BLS  Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reports little change in January 2021, a clear sign that the recovery is not charging ahead. In fact, hiring and job openings are below where they were before the recession hit, which makes it impossible to recover anytime soon when we have such a massive hole to fill in the labor market. In January, job openings mildly increased from 6.8 million to 6.9 million while hires softened for two months in a row. Hires declined from 6.1 million in November to 5.4 million in December, then down to 5.3 million in January.

One of the most striking indicators from today’s report is the job-seekers ratio—the ratio of unemployed workers (averaged for mid-January and mid-February) to job openings (at the end of January). On average, there were 10.1 million unemployed workers compared with only 6.9 million job openings. This translates into a job-seekers ratio of about 1.5 unemployed workers to every job opening. Put another way, for every 15 workers who were officially counted as unemployed, there were only available jobs for 10 of them. That means that, no matter what they did, there were no jobs for 3.1 million unemployed workers.

Read more

Unemployment insurance claims are still about 18 million more than they were a year ago: The new relief and recovery bill will help millions of families


One year ago last week—the week ending March 7, 2020—was the final week of normal unemployment insurance (UI) claims before the COVID recession. That week, there were 211,000 initial UI claims. The week after that, it jumped to 282,000. From there, it skyrocketed into the millions.

Last week—the week ending March 6, 2021—another 1.2 million people applied for UI. This included 712,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 478,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA)—the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. The 1.2 million who applied for UI last week was unchanged from the prior week. The four-week moving average of total initial claims was also unchanged.

Last week was the 51st 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 greater than the 10th-worst week of the Great Recession.)

Read more

Claims of labor shortages in H-2B industries don’t hold up to scrutiny: President Biden should not expand a flawed temporary work visa program

Key takeaways:

  • The Biden administration is now considering whether to increase the number of visas in the H-2B program—a temporary work visa program for lower-wage jobs intended for use when there are labor shortages—and is under significant pressure from business groups to roughly double the size of the program.
  • The economy, however, is showing no signs of labor shortages in H-2B jobs. In fact, the opposite is true: The latest labor market data show very high unemployment rates in major H-2B industries as well as nearly 5 million unemployed workers in a host of occupations for which H-2B jobs are commonly approved.
  • The H-2B program’s current rules make it easy for employers to game the system when it comes to recruiting unemployed workers. And the program is flawed, rife with abuse, and in desperate need of reform, as numerous reports and investigations have proven, calling into question the credibility of the program.
  • President Biden has the authority to direct the leadership at the Departments of Homeland Security and Labor to reject an increase the H-2B program in 2021, based on the fact that there are no labor shortages in H-2B industries that would justify such an increase. He should instead push for major reforms of the H-2B program that would ensure domestic recruitment efforts become legitimate and that migrant workers will be treated and paid fairly and have a path to citizenship.

Read more

Strengthening workers’ right to organize is 50 years overdue

The union election underway at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, has caught national attention because of how significant a win would be for workers in the South and across the country. Even President Biden has weighed in on the importance of unions, proclaiming in a new video that workers should have a free choice to organize without interference or threats from their employer—a presidential endorsement that is without precedent in our lifetimes. This week, the House of Representatives is scheduled to debate and presumably pass comprehensive legislation—the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—to strengthen workers’ ability to join together and form unions to negotiate for better pay, safety protections, and fairness on the job.

This newfound attention to the importance of workers having collective power to bargain with their employers is welcome, but it is long overdue—more than 50 years overdue.

The fact is, Amazon is using tactics to fight its workers in Bessemer, Alabama—thinly veiled threats, mandatory meetings in which management rails against the union, hiring third-party professional union busters—that are standard fare in the employer playbook, and have been for decades. Employers fully realize and take advantage of fundamental, structural weaknesses in our federal labor law that is supposed to protect and promote workers’ freedom to organize unions.

We recently co-authored a paper that shows, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, employers had learned how to exploit the weaknesses in the National Labor Relations Act to block union organizing. Employers realized the law has no teeth—it literally has no monetary penalties against employers who illegally fire union activists or otherwise interfere with workers’ rights. Under the guise of “free speech,” employers are allowed to hold one-sided “captive audience” meetings, where management criticizes and lobbies against forming a union, often predicting layoffs and strikes if workers unionize. Yet the union isn’t allowed in the room, and companies frequently forbid workers from speaking up or exclude pro-union workers from the meeting. Employers routinely bend and break the law. A recent Economic Policy Institute report found that in four out of 10 organizing efforts, workers have to file charges to try to stop their bosses’ illegal activity. In up to a third of elections, employers are charged with illegally firing union supporters.

Read more

The ‘$15 minimum wage is too expensive for Peoria’ argument doesn’t hold water: Five reasons why

The one argument made often in the debate over raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour nationwide by 2025, is that you can’t expect to pay the same wages in Chicago as you do in Peoria.

Such an increase, critics contend, will bankrupt small businesses, will impact payroll decisions for corporations with operations nationally, will raise wages beyond what folks outside of big cities need to make ends meet—and will ultimately hurt local economies.

Turns out, these arguments are bogus.

Here are five reasons why:

1. $15 anywhere in this country makes cost-of-living sense.

Today, in all areas across the United States, a single adult without children needs at least $31,200—what a full-time worker making $15 an hour earns annually—to achieve a modest but adequate standard of living. By 2025, workers in these areas and those with children will need even more, according to projections based on the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.

Read more