Posted November 25, 2020 at 9:59 am by Heidi Shierholz

Unemployment claims rise for second week in a row: Millions will lose federal unemployment benefits in December unless Senate Republicans act

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday this week, data on unemployment insurance (UI) claims—usually released on Thursdays—were released today. The data show that another 1.1 million people applied for UI benefits last week, including 778,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 312,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). The 1.1 million who applied for UI last week was an increase of 22,000 from the prior week’s figures—the second week in a row that initial claims have risen. Further, last week was the 36th straight week total initial claims were 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 greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession.)

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 299,000, from 6.4 million to 6.1 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 on December 26 (as is PUA—more on these expirations below).

In the latest data available for PEUC (the week ending November 7), PEUC rose by 132,000, from 4.4 million to 4.5 million, offsetting only about a third of the 414,000 decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits for the same week. Why didn’t PEUC rise more? 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 now exhausting PEUC benefits, at the same time others are taking it up. More than 1.5 million workers have exhausted PEUC so far (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). In some states, if workers exhaust PEUC, they can get on yet another program, Extended Benefits (EB). However, in the latest data, just 601,000 workers were on EB. That’s far less than half of those who have exhausted PEUC. Most are left with nothing.

Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data are for November 7). The total number of workers on UI ticked up in the latest data, even with the exhaustions we’ve seen so far. This is a wake-up call.

Figure A

Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–November 7, 2020: *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*

Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
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 6,837,941 4,143,389 9,433,127 746,403
2020-10-31 6,452,002 4,376,847 8,681,647 806,430
2020-11-07 6,037,690 4,509,284 9,147,753 757,496
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 25, 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 17th week of unemployment in this pandemic for which recipients did not get the extra $600. And, as mentioned above, PUA and PEUC will expire on December 26—unless Congress acts. Millions of workers are now depending on these programs. DOL reports that a total of 13.7 million workers were on PUA (9.1 million) or PEUC (4.5 million) during the week ending November 7. When these programs expire, millions of these workers and their families will be financially devastated. An excellent paper from The Century Foundation finds that 12 million workers will lose PUA or PEUC benefits when they expire on December 26—on top of the 4.4 million who will have exhausted them before then. It also finds that only 2.9 million will then be eligible for Extended Benefits. That means a total of 13.5 million workers (12.0 million + 4.4 million – 2.9 million) will have lost CARES Act unemployment benefits by the end of the year with nothing to fill in the gap.

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 will see their benefits disappear on December 26 if he doesn’t act. The cruelty is beyond belief.

And blocking more COVID relief is not just cruel, it’s bad economic policy. UI is great stimulus. The spending made possible by pandemic UI benefits is supporting millions of jobs. Letting these benefits expire means cutting those jobs. There are now 25.7 million workers who are officially unemployed, otherwise out of work because of the virus, or have seen a drop in hours and pay because of the pandemic. And job growth is slowing. Stimulus is desperately needed.

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, which means stimulus is a racial justice issue. Further, workers in this pandemic aren’t just losing their jobs—millions of workers and their family members have lost employer-provided health insurance due to the COVID-19 downturn. Senate Republicans are failing struggling families.

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