More than 2 million seek jobless aid, barely budging from prior week

[groundloop]

Source: CBS News

More than 2 million Americans sought jobless aid in the week ending July 11, reinforcing concerns that the economic recovery is stalling as coronavirus cases surge across the South and West.

About 1.3 million people applied for unemployment aid in the week ending July 11, a figure essentially unchanged from the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. Another 928,000 applied for special aid for freelancers and the self-employed, a drop of 117,000 from the week before.

Initial jobless claims increased in 33 states, with Texas, New Jersey, Louisiana, Maryland and New York showing the biggest jumps. More than 22 states have paused or reversed plans to reopen their economies as coronavirus cases have surged in recent weeks.

"It's clear that the path of the virus and the economic recovery are closely intertwined," economists at Bank of America Global Research said in a note.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unemployment-jobless-claims-2020-07-16/

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"It's clear that the path of the virus and the economic recovery are closely intertwined" - and no matter how hard tRump wishes it would all fix itself nothing's going to happen without some leadership.

[stopbush]

1. My wife went back to work a month ago here in CA

where she works as a cosmetologist, first with just a few hours a week, eventually up to 35 hours last week. She was on unemployment and was reporting her wages which were “excessive” so she received no UI benefits for those 4 weeks.

On Sunday, she clicked the box on the EDD UI certification form to indicate she had returned to work full time. On Monday, Gov Newsom closed down the hair salons in our county, so she is going back on unemployment. Just need to reopen her existing claim.

Look for millions of Californians who had returned to work being in the same boat. That will add a nice spike to the unemployment numbers.

[progree]

2. 32 M claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending June 27

https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending June 27 was 32,003,330, a decrease of 433,005 from the previous week. There were 1,632,689 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019

For a breakdown of that scroll to the table and then to the "PERSONS CLAIMING UI BENEFITS IN ALL PROGRAMS (UNADJUSTED)" section. About 15.2 M got benefits under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistant (PUA) program, which is separate and different than the state programs that the media often leave out ... I'm glad CBS included them.

From the CBS article:

About 1 in 5 workers, or 32 million people, was receiving some sort of jobless assistance as of the end of June. That figure has remained stubbornly high despite increases in employment in May and June.

Kudos to CBS. They even have a graph of it.