New unemployment claims for week ending 6/20/20 were 1.480M, down slightly from 1.540M the previous week, which was revised upward from 1.508M.
The impact of new claims is mitigated by the number of people getting rehired. That leads to the calculation of ongoing payments for unemployment which are:
- 20.5M, revised to 20.289M – 6/13/20
- 19.52M – 6/20/20
This discussion will be posted on several of my blogs.
Data:
Weekly press release from the Department of labor: Unemployment insurance weekly claims
6/25 – Business Insider – US weekly jobless claims hit 1.5 million, exceeding economist forecasts – Consensus of forecasts was for 1.3M new claims for the week. Actual was 0.2M higher. This is second week in a row where there actual was higher than consensus expectation.
During the Great Recession, the highest number of weekly claims was 665K. We have now had 14 weeks in a row in which the weekly claims were above that of the Great Recession.
Article says the total new weekly claims during the Great Recession was about 37M. That is far less than the 47M new claims in 14 weeks, plus another 10M under the PUA.
6/25/20– Wall Street Journal – Unemployment Claims Leveled Off at Historically High Totals So Far in June – Article labels is an indicator of a sluggish recovery.
Summary of new claims and running total
Below is my running tally of the new unemployment claims.
Table shows weekly claims in millions and as a percentage of February civilian labor force
Several subtotals are presented.
| unemployed | % of Feb | PUA | % of Feb | |
| 2/1 to 3/14 ave. | 0.22 | |||
| —— | —- | |||
| 3/21/20 | 3.31 | 2.0% | ||
| 3/28/20 | 6.87 | 4.2% | ||
| 4/4/20 | 6.62 | 4.0% | ||
| 4/11/20 | 5.24 | 3.2% | ||
| 4/18/20 | 4.44 | 2.7% | ||
| 4/25/20 | 3.84 | 2.3% | ||
| earlier | 1.60 | 1.0% | ||
| 5/2/20 | 3.17 | 1.9% | 0.96 | 0.6% |
| 5/9/20 | 2.69 | 1.6% | 0.84 | 0.5% |
| 5/16/20 | 2.45 | 1.5% | 2.23 | 1.4% |
| 5/23/20 | 2.12 | 1.3% | 1.19 | 0.7% |
| 5/30/20 | 1.88 | 1.1% | ??? | |
| 6/6/20 | 1.57 | 1.0% | 0.75 | 0.5% |
| 6/13/20 | 1.54 | 0.9% | 1.71 | 1.0% |
| 6/20/20 | 1.48 | 0.9% | 0.73 | 0.4% |
| —- | —- | —- | —- | |
| shutdown subtotal | 47.20 | 28.7% | 10.01 | 6.1% |
| PUA | 10.01 | 6.1% | ||
| —- | —- | |||
| shutdown total | 57.21 | 34.8% | ||
| 2/20 civilian labor force | 164.54 |
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
The California Employment Development Division describes PUA as:
As part of the federal CARES Act, the new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program helps unemployed Californians who are business owners, self-employed, independent contractors, have limited work history, and others not usually eligible for regular state UI benefits who are out of business or services are significantly reduced as a direct result of the pandemic. The provisions of the program include:
Data for PUA is listed starting 5/2/20.
I missed the new PUA claims for 5/30. The 6/13/20 PUA claims number includes a catch-up. Thus the 5/30 data is included on the 6/13 line.