“V-Shaped” Recovery Not Now: It Gets Worse, 30.55 Million on Unemployment. Week 14 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse
Had a setback. Over 11 million gig workers on unemployment insurance. But four states, including Florida, still can’t process federal PUA claims.
This unemployment crisis is shape-shifting, and some states are still trying to catch up with the torrent of unemployment claims, and some states still haven’t figured out how to process unemployment claims under federal programs, including Florida. And so, after three weeks of improving, the data tracking the unemployment crisis got worse.
The total number of people who continued to receive unemployment compensation in the week ended June 20 under all state and federal unemployment insurance programs combined, including gig workers, rose to 30.55 million people (not seasonally adjusted), according to Labor Department data this morning. This is up by 1.3 million people from the prior week (29.26 million), and the second-highest ever, just below the record during the week ended May 23. V-shaped recovery not now:
Even while workers in restaurants, bars, retail stores, hotels, hair salons, etc. are getting called back to work, it’s corporate jobs that are getting axed now. Layoffs at small companies happen quietly, and we rarely see them in the news. But layoffs at big companies make the news, such as Macy’s announcement today that it will lay off 3,900 staff in corporate and management areas, even as it’s bringing back store employees. This is one of the ways in which the unemployment crisis is shape-shifting.
Torrent of new state unemployment claims continues.
Not seasonally adjusted, 1.457 million initial claims under state programs were processed in the week ended June 20, up from 1.433 million initial claims a week ago. These are newly laid-off people who filed their initial unemployment claims that week. While a fraction of the 6-million range in late March, it is still more than twice the magnitude of the spikes during the prior unemployment crises in 1982 and 2009.
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