Unemployment Crisis Going in Wrong Direction: Week 25 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse

[marmar]

Unemployment Crisis Going in Wrong Direction: Week 25 of U.S. Labor Market Collapse
by Wolf Richter • Sep 10, 2020 •

Continued unemployment claims rise for second week, to 29.6 million, worst since Aug 1, meaning 18.4% of labor force is on unemployment insurance. State & federal initial claims jumped to 1.7 million in the week (not seasonally adjusted).


Total continued claims for unemployment insurance (UI) under all state and federal programs rose by 380,000, to 29.6 million people (not seasonally adjusted), the highest since August 1, according to the Department of Labor this morning. This was the second weekly increase in a row, after the 2.2-million jump last week.

These 29.6 million people who continued to claim UI under all programs translate into 18.4% of the civilian labor force of 161 million:



Blue columns – continued claims under state programs: +54k

The number of people who continued claiming UI under state programs rose by 54k to 13.2 million (not seasonally adjusted), the first increase after five decreases in a row. .........(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/09/10/unemployment-crisis-going-in-wrong-direction-week-25-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/

[progree]

1. I've posted about this 7 times, but it just doesn't seem to resonate for some reason

Example: "Continuing claims in all programs has risen from 27.0 M to 29.6 M in 2 weeks"
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14057812

I posted on Thursday an OP in the Economy Group too, 0 replies, 0 recs. Oh well, life sucks and then you die.

Maybe the pretty graph will help. Kinda sucks methinks that we're above mid-May levels, which were not considered paradaisical.

As always, note the discrepancy between 29.6 M continuing claims, and the BLS's Friday (9/4) job report of 13.6 M unemployed.