With unemployment benefits for millions of workers set to expire in December, Senate Republicans must stop blocking aid
More than 1.0 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits again last week, including 709,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 298,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program that provides up to 39 weeks of benefits for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like the self-employed. Without congressional action, PUA will expire on December 26 (more on that below).
The 1.0 million who applied for UI last week was a decline of 112,000 from the prior week’s figures. Last week was the 34th straight week total initial claims were far 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 more than 3.0 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 436,000, from 7.2 million to 6.8 million.
For now, 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. However, like PUA, PEUC is set to expire on December 26 (more on that below).
Voters chose more than just the president: A review of important state ballot initiative outcomes
With enormous attention focused—understandably—on the outcome of the presidential and congressional races on November 3, it’s easy to forget that voters also decided on nearly 6,000 state legislative races and a host of ballot measures in states and localities, including many with important implications for workers, economic justice, racial equity, and the fight against climate change.
There were 120 statewide measures considered by voters across the country. In this post, we briefly highlight some of the notable measures that would have a meaningful impact on the welfare of workers, families, and communities; the power of workers and communities to have a voice in economic policy decisions; and the ability of all people to achieve economic security, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender. We also call attention to the advocacy and research of Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) members in these states, whose work in many cases was critical in explaining the implications of the measures for workers, families, and communities.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey shows declines in hires: As winter hits, the Biden administration will be facing a mounting, not waning, crisis
Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that, as of the middle of September, the economy was still 10 million jobs below where it was in February. Job growth slowed considerably over the last few months and the jobs deficit in October was easily over 11.6 million from where we would have been if the economy had continued adding jobs at the pre-pandemic pace.
Today’s BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reports job openings changed little at 6.4 million in September while hires and layoffs fell. While the slowdown in layoffs is promising from 1.5 million to 1.3 million, the softening in hires is a concern (6.0 million to 5.9 million). The U.S. economy is seeing a significantly slower pace of hiring than we experienced in May or June—hiring is roughly where it was before the recession, which is a big problem given that we have more than 11.6 million jobs to make up. And job openings are now substantially below where they were before the recession began (6.4 million at the end of September, compared to 7.1 million on average in the year prior to the recession). No matter how it is measured, the U.S. economy is facing a huge job shortfall.
One of the most striking indicators from today’s report is the job seekers ratio, that is, the ratio of unemployed workers (averaged for mid-September and mid-October) to job openings (at the end of September). On average, there were 11.8 million unemployed workers while there were only 6.4 million job openings. This translates into a job seeker ratio of about 1.8 unemployed workers to every job opening. Another way to think about this: for every 18 workers who were officially counted as unemployed, there were only available jobs for 10 of them. That means, no matter what they did, there were no jobs for 5.4 million unemployed workers. And this misses the fact that many more weren’t counted among the unemployed. The economic pain remains widespread with more than 25 million workers hurt by the coronavirus downturn. Without congressional action to stimulate the economy, we are facing a slow, painful recovery.Read more
What the next president inherits: More than 25 million workers are being hurt by the coronavirus downturn
Some of the most frequent questions I’ve gotten in the last few months are, “How many workers are being hurt by the coronavirus recession?” and “What kind of economy will the next president inherit?”
There is a huge amount of confusion about the number of workers impacted by this downturn because two major, completely separate, government data sets that address these questions are reporting very different numbers. Specifically, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the official number of unemployed workers in October, from the Current Population Survey, was 11.1 million. But during the reference week for the October monthly unemployment figure—the week ending October 17—the Department of Labor (DOL) reported that there were a total of 21.5 million people claiming unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in all programs. The UI number is compiled by DOL from reports it receives from state unemployment insurance agencies.
What is going on? In a nutshell: The BLS official number of unemployed workers vastly understates the number of workers who have faced the negative consequences of the coronavirus recession, and DOL’s UI number overstates the number of workers receiving unemployment benefits.
Let’s first look at UI. One straightforward way that the weekly UI numbers are higher than the monthly unemployment numbers is that the UI numbers include both Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and the monthly unemployment numbers include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The number of people on UI (regular state benefits, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, or Extended Benefits) for the week ending October 17 was 294,000 in Puerto Rico and 4,000 in the Virgin Islands, for a total of nearly 300,000 UI claims outside of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Over a million people still filed initial unemployment claims last week with no COVID-19 relief in sight
Another 1.1 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 751,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 363,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program that provides up to 39 weeks of benefits for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like the self-employed. Without congressional action, PUA will expire in less than two months (more on that below).
The 1.1 million who applied for UI last week was little changed (a decline of 3,000) from the prior week’s revised figures. Last week was the 33rd straight week total initial claims were far 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 3.6 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 538,000, from 7.8 million to 7.3 million.
For now, 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. However, PEUC is set to expire in less than two months (more on that below).
Older workers are voting with an eye on the economy
Recent polls have shown that older Americans and women appear to have turned against President Trump, and the reasons aren’t hard to grasp. The administration’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially deadly for older Americans, while women have borne the brunt of the economic downturn, with greater job losses and caregiving responsibilities.
One factor has received less attention: Older Americans, too, have been hard hit in the economic downturn. Senior women (women ages 65 and older) have seen a steep decline in employment—almost as steep as that of young women just entering the labor force (see Table 1). Senior men also saw a steep decline in employment early in the pandemic but rebounded faster than senior women.
Heading into election day, at least 30 million workers are being hurt by the coronavirus recession
One of the most frequent questions I’ve gotten in the last few months is, “How many workers are being hurt by the coronavirus recession?” There is a huge amount of confusion about this because two major, completely separate, government data sets that address this question are reporting very different numbers. Specifically, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the official number of unemployed workers in September, from the Current Population Survey, was 12.6 million (September is the latest data available; October numbers will be released this Friday). But during the reference week for the September monthly unemployment figure—the week ending September 12—the Department of Labor (DOL) reported that there were a total of 26.5 million people claiming unemployment insurance (UI) benefits. The UI number is compiled by DOL from reports it receives from state unemployment insurance agencies.
What is going on? In a nutshell: The BLS official number of unemployed workers vastly understates the number of workers who have faced the negative consequences of the coronavirus recession, and DOL’s UI number overstates the number of workers receiving unemployment benefits.
Let’s first look at UI. An important way the numbers coming out of DOL are overstating the number of people receiving UI benefits right now has to do with delays in the processing of applications (delays caused by the overwhelming number of applications UI agencies have received during the COVID-19 crisis). When a worker’s benefits are delayed, they are paid retroactively. This is as it should be, but it causes reporting problems. Say a worker claims UI benefits not just for their most recent week of unemployment, but also for the six prior weeks. That worker will show up in the data not as one person who claimed seven weeks of benefits, but as seven claims. Nobody knows how extensive that problem is, but this New York Times article has good information on it. Another issue is that state UI agencies have been the target of fraud—not individuals filing one or two fraudulent claims, but sophisticated cyberattacks involving extensive identity theft and the overriding of security systems. Note: None of this negates the fact that the expansions of unemployment insurance in the CARES Act were an enormous success! These expansions have been a lifeline to millions and a crucial boost to the economy.
Moral policy = good economics: What’s needed to lift up 140 million poor and low-income people further devastated by the pandemic
Seven months into a global pandemic, U.S. families are suffering: 225,000 lives have been lost, 30 million workers have lost either jobs or significant hours of work, nearly every state is facing sharp drops in revenue that will threaten even more cuts to essential social programs and jobs, and the U.S. economy remains deeply depressed, and a reentry into outright recession in coming months is highly possible.
There is no mystery about what has brought us to this point. The immediate cause of the economic crisis we face is the fallout of the pandemic and the Trump administration’s failed response. As social distancing measures were enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus, economic activity collapsed. A burst of new activity has accompanied some reopenings, but now, because the government has failed to curb the pandemic and failed to enact a just response, the economy is plunging deeper into crisis.
This all is taking place in a society that was already deeply unequal. Before the pandemic, 140 million people were poor or one emergency away from being poor, including approximately 60% of Black, non-Hispanic people (26 million); 64% of Hispanic people (38 million); 60% of indigenous people (2.15 million); 40% of Asian people (8 million); and 33% of white people (66 million).
The pandemic spread and deepened along the fissures of that inequality and the inadequate public policies that existed prior to the pandemic. It is no surprise that 8 million people were pushed below the poverty line in the past five months as COVID-19 economic disruptions continued.
Senate Republicans have failed struggling families: It is cruel, and bad economics, to withhold stimulus aid
Another 1.1 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits last week, including 751,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 360,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers. It provides up to 39 weeks of benefits, but it is set to expire at the end of this year.
The 1.1 million who applied for UI last week was a decline of just 25,000 from the prior week’s revised figures. Last week was the 32nd straight week total initial claims were far 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 3.7 times where they were a year ago.)
Most states provide 26 weeks (six months) of regular benefits, and 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 709,000, from 8.5 million to 7.8 million.
Fortunately, 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. However, in the latest data available for PEUC (the week ending October 10) PEUC rose by “just” 387,000 to 3.7 million, offsetting only 42% of the 921,000 decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits for the same week. The small increase in PEUC relative to the decline in continuing claims for regular state UI is likely due in large part to delays workers are facing getting onto PEUC, including workers either not being told about PEUC or not being told that they have to apply for it (states are required to notify eligible workers, but it may not be happening). Further, many of the roughly 2 million workers who were on unemployment insurance before this recession began, or who are in states with less than the standard 26 weeks of regular state benefits, are exhausting PEUC benefits.
Counties that pivoted to Trump had lower wage growth than other counties
In the home stretch to next week’s election, a number of articles have attempted to rebut claims that the Trump administration has practiced “phony” populism. But the only piece of real-world evidence these articles cite to defend the Trump administration’s record in helping working-class voters turns out to be either false or highly misleading.
Specifically, one of the articles defending the Trump record, by Alan Tonelson, highlights wage growth in “pivot counties”—counties that voted for Obama twice but then voted for Trump—and claims that “Average annual private-sector pay in most of these [pivot] counties rose faster during the first three years of the Trump administration than during the last three years of the [sic] Mr. Obama’s presidency.”
In Tonelson’s telling, this wage growth justifies the vote-flipping in those counties between Obama and Trump because the Trump administration has done something that has boosted wage growth in these presumably blue-collar counties. But Tonelson’s analysis is wrong, for a number of reasons.
First, our calculations show that pivot counties didn’t see faster wage growth on average. As Figure A shows, between 2013 and 2016 average real annual pay in pivot counties grew by 4.3%, and between 2016 and 2019 these pivot county average earnings grew by just 2.2%. In all other (nonpivot) counties, the slowdown in earnings growth was smaller: Average earnings grew by 4.0% in the first period and then 3.1% in the second period.