Posted November 12, 2020 at 10:08 am by Heidi Shierholz

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).

In the latest data available for PEUC (the week ending October 24), PEUC rose by 160,000, from 3.98 million to 4.14 million, offsetting only about a quarter of the 598,000 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 part to administrative delays workers are facing getting onto PEUC. Further, 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. More than a million workers have exhausted PEUC so far (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). Last week, more than half a million (552,000) workers were on Extended Benefits (EB), which is a program that unemployed workers can get on in some states if they’ve exhausted both regular state benefits and PEUC. But workers will soon begin to exhaust EB in large numbers as well.

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data are for October 24). Continuing claims are nearly 20 million above where they were a year ago. However, use caution interpreting trends over time since March because of reporting issues.

Figure A

Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–October 24, 2020: *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*

Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly STC and EB)
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 6,837,876 4,143,389 9,433,127 742,719
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 12, 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 15th week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not get the extra $600. And worse, without congressional action, PUA and PEUC will expire in just over six weeks, on December 26. Millions of workers are depending on these programs—DOL reports that a total of 13.6 million workers were on PUA (9.4 million) or PEUC (4.1 million) during the week ending October 24. When these programs expire, millions of these workers and their families will be financially devastated. 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 would see their benefits disappear on December 26 if he doesn’t act. The cruelty is mind-blowing.

And blocking more COVID relief is not just cruel, it’s terrible economics. For example, the spending made possible by the extra $600 in UI was supporting millions of jobs. Letting the $600 expire means cutting those jobs. Not providing stimulus in the form of aid to state and local governments will also cost millions of jobs. 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. Further, workers in this pandemic aren’t just losing their jobs—an estimated 12 million workers and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to COVID-19. Senate Republicans are failing struggling families.

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