The employment news is bad enough without reporters and pundits exaggerating the grim trends. Almost 39 million initial claims for unemployment have been filed since mid-March when the COVID-19 pandemic really started taking hold of the economy. It is probably fair to conclude that “Nearly 39 million have lost jobs in US since virus took hold,” as the AP reported last week. In reality, a very small number of people might be doubled counted under some rare circumstances.
However, it is emphatically not true that “About 40 Million Americans Are Now Unemployed” as Forbes reported or that “US unemployment rises to 39 million” as the reported by the Christian Science Monitor, among many other publications. The difference? Even as (too) many Americans are losing their jobs and filing for unemployment, many other workers have been either rehired in their old jobs or have found new jobs. How many? It’s roughly the difference between “initial claims” for unemployment and “continuing claims.”
Official unemployment data does not nearly capture the pandemic’s full devastating impact of the on the labor market. Nonetheless, if we’re interested in counting the number of Americans who lost jobs due to the pandemic and remain out of work, the figure we should focus on is continuing claims, not cumulative initial claims. The 39 million initial claims figure, widely conflated in the press as joblessness, is 56% greater than the 23 million people who lost their jobs in the pandemic and remain unemployed according to the continuing claims data. In all, some 13 million Americans who initially filed for unemployment in the last two months have already been called back to work or found new jobs.
You may read my analysis here.
Posted: by Andrew J. Nelson
