New unemployment claims for week ending 6/27/20 were 1.427M, down slightly from 1.480M the previous week. That is five weeks of between 1.4M and 1.9M following ten weeks of between 2.1M and 6.9M new claims.
The impact of new claims is mitigated by the number of people getting rehired which leads to the calculation of ongoing payments for unemployment.
- 20.29M revised down from 20.5M- 6/13/20
- 19.23M revised down from 19.52M – 6/20/20
- 19.29M – 6/27/20 (a rare and exquisitely unexpected typo refers to this as the 6/20 week)
That shows the number of people finding new jobs is running higher than the number of people losing their jobs.
This discussion will be posted at several of my blogs.
My tally of data:
- 48.6 M – seasonally adjusted new claims since the economy was shut down
- 12.8 M – new claims for unemployment by people who otherwise aren’t eligible for unemployment – self-employed and independent contractors
- 61.5 M – total of seasonally adjusted plus independent contractors and self-employed people
Data:
Weekly press release from the Department of labor: Unemployment insurance weekly claims
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 | 3.3 | 2.0% | ||
| 3/28/20 | 6.9 | 4.2% | ||
| 4/4/20 | 6.6 | 4.0% | ||
| 4/11/20 | 5.2 | 3.2% | ||
| 4/18/20 | 4.4 | 2.7% | ||
| 4/25/20 | 3.8 | 2.3% | ||
| earlier | 1.6 | 1.0% | ||
| 5/2/20 | 3.2 | 1.9% | 1.0 | 0.6% |
| 5/9/20 | 2.7 | 1.6% | 0.8 | 0.5% |
| 5/16/20 | 2.4 | 1.5% | 2.2 | 1.4% |
| 5/23/20 | 2.1 | 1.3% | 1.2 | 0.7% |
| 5/30/20 | 1.9 | 1.1% | ??? | |
| 6/6/20 | 1.6 | 1.0% | 0.8 | 0.5% |
| 6/13/20 | 1.5 | 0.9% | 1.7 | 1.0% |
| 6/20/20 | 1.5 | 0.9% | 0.7 | 0.4% |
| 6/27/20 | 1.4 | 0.9% | 0.0% | |
| tie to cumulative | 2.8 | 1.7% | ||
| —- | —- | —- | —- | |
| shutdown subtotal | 48.6 | 29.6% | 12.8 | 7.8% |
| PUA | 12.8 | 7.8% | ||
| —- | —- | |||
| shutdown total | 61.5 | 37.4% |
The PUA data is a bit odd. This week the PUA count is cumulative. Most weeks it is a count for the week. There appear to be some oddities in how the data is accumulated or how it is reported. Above table lists an adjustment to tie in to the cumulative data reported for week ending 6/27.
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: