Without federal aid to state and local governments, 5.3 million workers will likely lose their jobs by the end of 2021: See estimated job losses by state
Last week, EPI hosted a bipartisan panel of economists who called upon policymakers to pass significant federal aid for state and local governments in coming months. This panel’s judgement was unanimous that federal aid for subnational governments is crucial for helping the economy mount a rapid recovery from the current crisis. In this post, we highlight that:
- If policymakers do nothing at the federal level to address these shortfalls, the United States could end 2021 with 5.3 million fewer jobs, with losses in every state.
- Further, if Congress passes some level of aid that is insufficient—less than $1 trillion—they will needlessly guarantee a significant job gap by the end of 2021.
- If they pass $500 billion of aid over that time, the jobs gap will likely be roughly 2.6 million. If they pass $300 billion of aid, the jobs gap will likely be roughly 3.7 million.
- While empirical estimates of the shortfall should guide policymakers’ thinking, they can (and actually should) avoid putting a firm sticker price on state and local aid by tying this aid to economic conditions. If the economy recovers faster than the forecasts driving the $1 trillion estimated shortfall indicate will happen, then less aid would be needed. If instead recovery lagged, more would be needed.
- Finally, filling in the estimated shortfalls would merely return state and local governments to their pre-crisis fiscal status quo. But the unique features of the current economic shock will put greater demands on public services than existed before the crisis. To go beyond macroeconomic stabilization and promote the general welfare, even more federal aid to these governments is likely needed.
Because a weakening economy undercuts state and local tax revenues, and because states operate under balanced budget constraints, the coming months will see intense downward pressure on state and local spending. Reductions in this spending will in turn significantly slow recovery from the current economic crisis. This is not an abstract concern—the historically slow recovery in state and local spending following the Great Recession by itself delayed a recovery in unemployment to pre-crisis levels by four full years.
The U.S. economy remains in an enormous jobs deficit: The labor market was down 15.9 million jobs at the end of April (JOLTS data), and down 19.6 million at the middle of May (jobs data)
Quick reminders about the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS):
- JOLTS data provide information on all pieces that go into the net change in the number of jobs. These components include: hires, layoffs, voluntary quits, and other job separations (which includes retirements and worker deaths). Putting those components together reveals the overall (or net) change.
- JOLTS data provide information about the end of one month to the end of the next, whereas the monthly employment numbers provide information from the middle of one month to the middle of the next.
This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data for April, showing the second-highest number of job separations on record (March was the highest) and the lowest level of hires on record. One important thing to understand about JOLTS data is the timing. JOLTS data provide information from the end of one month to the end of the next, whereas the monthly employment numbers provide information from the middle of one month to the middle of the next. The JOLTS data showed that 6.4 million jobs were lost from the end of March to the end of April. The monthly employment numbers straddle these numbers, showing that 20.7 million jobs were lost from mid-March to mid-April, and 2.5 million jobs were gained from mid-April to mid-May. Together, the JOLTS data and the monthly employment numbers paint a picture of the peak of job loss in this recession being in late March or early April, and people beginning to go back to work by the beginning of May. But no matter how you measure it, the U.S. economy remains in an enormous jobs deficit—we were down a total of 15.9 million jobs at the end of April (according to the JOLTS data), and down a total of 19.6 million at the middle of May (according to the monthly employment data).
The Fed’s crisis response: Helping corporations, yes, but mostly at the expense of financial predators
A number of recent articles imply that Americans should be mad at the Federal Reserve for bailing out the rich in the coronavirus crisis. This seems wrong to me. We should be mad at nearly every other policymaker—mostly Congress and the president—for failing to do enough to bail out typical working families.
The Fed, conversely, has maximized the weak tools it has available right now for helping these families. Maybe we should give the Fed more and better tools for future recessions—but it’s not useful to get mad at the Fed for failing to do things it can’t do right now.
This is not to say the Fed is a force for good always and everywhere. There really are times when the Fed intervenes on the side of corporate interests in what is essentially a distributive conflict between labor and capital. (By “capital” I’m including the corporate managers who serve as corporate agents and whose rewards trade off pretty sharply against typical workers’ pay.) Usually the Fed’s intervention on behalf of capital occurs when it cuts economic expansions short by raising interest rates in the name of controlling inflation, robbing typical workers of the leverage to secure faster wage growth that really tight labor markets could give them. As we have often written, these actions by the Fed have been hugely consequential, contributing significantly to the disastrously slow wage growth for the bottom 80% of the U.S. workforce for most of the last 40 years.
However, lots of recent evidence suggests that the Fed—now recognizing how distributionally important these past episodes have been—is genuinely concerned about avoiding the kind of prematurely contractionary policies that curtail employment possibilities for traditionally disadvantaged groups and hamstring typical workers’ wage growth. This has been a huge progressive win.
Today’s Fed intervention is not part of a capital–labor conflict
By lending to and buying the debt of private businesses in response to the coronavirus crisis, the Fed is not wading into a capital–labor conflict on the wrong side. Instead, it is wading into a conflict between nonfinancial capital and financial predators.
Black deaths at the hands of law enforcement are linked to historical lynchings: U.S. counties where lynchings were more prevalent from 1877 to 1950 have more officer-involved killings
“A lynching is much more than just a murder. A murder may occur in private. A lynching is a public spectacle; it demands an audience… A lynching is a majority’s way of telling a minority population that the law cannot protect it.” — Aatish Taseer, British journalist
George Floyd’s death was more than just a murder, it was a modern-day lynching.
The agonizing similarity in the death of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, is that current and former police officers participated in their lynching. From 1877 to 1950, nearly 4,000 individuals were the victims of lynchings. Some have speculated that as many as 75% of historical lynchings “were perpetrated with the direct or indirect assistance of law enforcement personnel.” Despite drawing attention from large crowds, many perpetrators of historical lynchings were never charged with a crime—a fact seen in many modern-day officer-involved shootings.
While historical lynchings peaked more than a century ago, these racist acts can be linked to officer-involved shootings today.
Using county-level data on historical lynchings and present-day officer-involved shootings, Figure A shows that historical lynchings are positively associated with officer-involved shootings for Blacks. That is, counties that experienced a higher number of historical lynchings have larger shares of officer-involved shootings of Blacks in the last five years.
What to watch on jobs day: The unemployment rate continues to climb but not equally for all demographic groups
In April, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that 20.5 million jobs were lost and the unemployment rate rose faster than ever before, hitting 14.7%, the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. May’s unemployment rate is expected to be far higher. Initial unemployment insurance claims suggest an excess of 10 million more people lost their jobs between mid-April and mid-May, the reference period for tomorrow’s report.
In advance of tomorrow’s jobs data from BLS, let’s take a minute to look more closely at the unemployment rate across various demographic groups and consider the extent of economic pain missed in the official count of the unemployed. Because of the use of the microdata in our calculations, the numbers in the figure below are not seasonally adjusted and therefore do not match the topline seasonally adjusted data released by BLS. The microdata, however, allow us to measure the unemployment rate and calculate the adjusted unemployment rate across a variety of groups not reported by the BLS.
The official unemployment rate is in dark blue in Figure A below. As you can see, the unemployment rate is incredibly high across the board. Except for those with an advanced degree, the unemployment rate of all groups has exceeded the highest level the overall unemployment rate hit at the height of the Great Recession, when it reached 10.0% in 2009 (and all groups have exceeded their group’s highest unemployment of the Great Recession). Even though jobs were lost across the board, the data indicate that job losses were particularly stark for black and brown workers, those who are less likely to be able to economically weather the storm. Historically higher unemployment rates and lower liquid savings make job losses even more devastating for African American workers and their families.
Release incarcerated Ohioans to flatten the coronavirus curve
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine acted quickly and decisively in March to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections in this Midwestern state, closing schools, restaurants, and other gathering places. He also took action by postponing the March primary to slow the spread of the virus, protect vulnerable populations, and keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.
Although not without controversy, these steps appear to have kept hospitals from being overwhelmed in the early months of the pandemic. And while the death toll is still rising, its climb has not been as steep as some models had predicted.
Gov. DeWine has not given the same attention to protecting incarcerated Ohioans and the workers who guard and serve them. At the end of May, the Marshall Project reported that Ohio’s state prison system has reported more deaths of incarcerated people than any other state system in the United States and more than the federal prison system. Ohio’s system has the third-highest per capita death rate among incarcerated people, behind Michigan and New Jersey.
No matter where we live or what we look like, we all want to make sure our loved ones are safe and healthy.
That’s why it’s important to call out the governor’s lack of action to save lives in Ohio prisons, which has a potentially disproportionate impact on black Ohioans. Of the nearly 48,000 people in Ohio prisons, approximately 47% of the men and 74% of the women are black; in contrast, 12% of the state’s total population is black. Black people are disproportionately represented among corrections officers as well, making up 18% of Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) staff in that role.
Close to one in four workers are either on unemployment benefits or are waiting to receive them: Congress must take action
Over the last week, I have been consumed with pain and anger over the police murders of George Floyd and so many other Black people—murders rooted in a long history of white supremacy and lynchings in the United States. That long history of white supremacy has profound effects on the labor market. For example, recessions hit Black workers harder than white workers because of dynamics like occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labor market disparities rooted in systemic racism. In this post, I am going to talk about today’s release of unemployment insurance data. These data highlight the deep recession we are now in—a recession that will exacerbate existing racial inequalities by causing greater job loss and income declines in Black households than white households.
Last week, 2.2 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the 11th week in a row that initial unemployment claims have been more than twice the worst week of the Great Recession.
Of the 2.2 million who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.6 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (UI), and 0.6 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the new federal program for workers who are out of work because of the virus but who are not eligible for regular UI (e.g., the self-employed). At this point, only 36 states and Puerto Rico are reporting PUA claims. This means PUA claims are still being undercounted.
Public education job losses in April are already greater than in all of the Great Recession
It has been well documented that fiscal austerity was a catastrophe for the recovery from the Great Recession. New estimates show that without sufficient aid to state and local governments, the COVID-19 shock could lead to a revenue shortfall of nearly $1 trillion by 2021 for state and local governments. In lieu of substantial federal investments, budget cuts are certain. But I, for one, did not expect to see the losses as soon as April. As of the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), state and local government employment fell by 981,000, with the vast majority of losses found in local government. And the majority of those local government losses are in the education sector, with a loss of 468,800 jobs in local public school employment alone.
State and local government austerity in the aftermath of the great recession contributed to a significant shortfall in employment in public K–12 school systems, a shortfall that continued through 2019. The figure below shows that, as of early 2020, public employment in elementary and secondary schools had yet to recover the level it had reached prior to the losses of the Great Recession. Furthermore, employment levels in the public education system have failed to keep up with growth in public school enrollment since 2008. As of September 2019, the start of the most recent pre-pandemic school year, local public education jobs were still 60,000 short of their September 2008 level, and they were over 300,000 lower than they would have needed to be to keep up with public school enrollment.
Then, the pandemic hit and local education jobs dropped sharply. More K–12 public education jobs were lost in April than in all of the Great Recession. And that’s before any austerity measures from lost state and local revenue have been put in place. A look at the Current Population Survey reveals that losses in public education were concentrated in certain occupations. While some teachers were spared, namely elementary and middle school teachers, others were not. Half of the job losses in K–12 public education between March and April were among special education teachers, tutors, and teaching assistants. Not only are these job losses devastating to those no longer getting a paycheck, but they negatively impact the education students receive. Other significant job losses occurred among counselors, nurses, janitors, and other building maintenance workers. Without sufficient staffing, we cannot safely reopen schools and get parents back to work—which will in turn hamper economic recovery.
Six states have at least one million workers either receiving regular unemployment benefits or waiting for their claim to be approved
The Department of Labor (DOL) released the most recent unemployment insurance (UI) claims data yesterday, showing that another 1.9 million people filed for regular UI benefits last week (not seasonally adjusted) and 1.2 million for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the new program for workers who aren’t eligible for regular UI, such as gig workers.
In the last 10 weeks, more than one in five people in the workforce are either receiving or have recently applied for unemployment benefits—regular or PUA. These benefits are a critical lifeline that help workers make ends meet while slowing the spread of coronavirus as we practice social distancing. The $600 increase in weekly UI benefits was perhaps the most effective measure in the CARES Act for insulating workers from economic harm, and it should be extended past July.
For the last few weeks, we have been reporting the sum of initial claims since we first started seeing the economic effects of the pandemic. This week, we are reporting a different measure of the cumulative number of people claiming UI: the total number of workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied and are still waiting to see if they will get benefits.
More than one in five workers are either receiving unemployment benefits or waiting for approval: Congress must do much, much more
Last week, 3.1 million workers applied for unemployment benefits. This is the tenth week in a row that initial unemployment claims are more than three times the worst week of the Great Recession.
Of the 3.1 million who applied for unemployment benefits last week, 1.9 million applied for regular state unemployment insurance (UI), and 1.2 million applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the new federal program for workers who are out of work because of the virus but who are not eligible for regular UI (e.g. the self-employed). At this point, 15 states and the District of Columbia are not yet even reporting PUA data. This means PUA claims are still being undercounted.
34.2 million workers are either receiving unemployment benefits or waiting for approval: Reported number of initial and continued UI and PUA claims, as of May 23, 2020
| Regular state UI: Continued claims | Regular state UI: Initial claims | PUA: Continued claims | PUA: Initial claims | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cumulative | 19,051,706 | 4,096,598 | 7,793,066 | 3,289,671 | 0 |
Notes: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is the new federal program for workers who are out of work because of the coronavirus but who are not eligible for regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits (e.g. the self-employed). Initial claims are still in the first round of processing. Continued claims have made it through at least the first round of processing.
Notes: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is the new federal program for workers who are out of work because of the virus but who are not eligible for regular state unemployment insurance (UI) benefits (e.g. the self-employed). Initial claims are still in the first round of processing. Continued claims have made it through at least the first round of processing. PUA initial claims are for the weeks ending May 9, May 16, and May 23; PUA continued claims are for the week ending May 9. Regular state UI initial claims are for the weeks ending May 9 and May 16; regular state UI continued claims are for the week ending May 16. Regular state UI claims are reported for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. PUA claims are currently being reported for 35 states; 15 states and the District of Columbia are not yet reporting PUA data.
Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Initial Claims [ICSA], retrieved from Department of Labor (DOL), https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf and https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/claims.asp, May 28, 2020.
Many commentators are reporting the cumulative number of initial regular state UI claims over the last 10 weeks as a measure of how many people have applied for UI in this pandemic. At this point, I believe we should abandon that approach because it ignores PUA—and is thus an understatement on that front—but may overstate things in other ways. For example it may lead to some double-counting. Instead, we can calculate the total number of workers who are either on unemployment benefits, or have applied and are still waiting to see if they will get benefits, in the following way:
A total of 19.1 million workers had made it through at least the first round of regular state UI processing as of May 16 (these are known as “continued” claims), and 4.1 million had filed initial UI claims on top of that but had not yet made it through the first round of processing as of May 23. And, 7.8 million workers had made it through at least the first round of PUA processing by May 9, and 3.3 million had filed initial PUA claims on top of that but had not yet made it through the first round of processing as of May 23. Altogether, that’s 34.2 million workers who are either on unemployment benefits or who have applied very recently and are waiting for approval—roughly two-thirds UI, and one-third PUA. Together, that is more than one in five people in the U.S. workforce.