“At this point, 15 states and the District of Columbia are not yet even reporting PUA data. This means PUA claims are still being under-counted,” said Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “This is the 10th week in a row that initial unemployment claims are more than three times the worst week of the Great Recession.”
“The unemployment situation is going to get worse before it gets better, and unemployment benefits applications will continue to flood in,” Shierholz said, “and we should never forget that overall numbers mask the fact that recessions do not hit different race and gender groups in the same way, because of things like occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labor market disparities.”
“Policy makers need to do more,” she said. “For example, a prolonged depression is virtually guaranteed without significant federal aid to state and local governments. We also must provide more funding to state unemployment insurance agencies to hire staff to speed up processing and to make improvements to websites and other administrative infrastructure.”