With unemployment benefits for millions of workers set to expire in December, Senate Republicans must stop blocking aid

More than 1.0 million people applied for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits again last week, including 709,000 people who applied for regular state UI and 298,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). PUA is the federal program that provides up to 39 weeks of benefits for workers who are not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like the self-employed. Without congressional action, PUA will expire on December 26 (more on that below). The 1.0 million who applied for UI last week was a decline of 112,000 from the prior week’s figures. Last week was the 34th straight week total initial claims were far greater than the worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims—because we didn’t have PUA in the Great Recession—initial claims last week were still more than 3.0 times where they were a year ago.) Most states provide 26 weeks of regular benefits, but this crisis has gone on much longer than that. That means many workers are exhausting their regular state UI benefits. In the most recent data, continuing claims for regular state UI dropped by 436,000, from 7.2 million to 6.8 million. For now, after an individual exhausts regular state benefits, they can move onto Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which is an additional 13 weeks of regular state UI. However, like PUA, PEUC is set to expire on December 26 (more on that below). In the latest data available for PEUC (the week ending October 24), PEUC rose by 160,000, from 3.98 million to 4.14 million, offsetting only about a quarter of the 598,000 decline in continuing claims for regular state benefits for the same week. The small increase in PEUC relative to the decline in continuing claims for regular state UI is likely due in part to administrative delays workers are facing getting onto PEUC. Further, many of the roughly 2 million workers who were on UI before the recession began, or who are in states with less than the standard 26 weeks of regular state benefits, are exhausting PEUC benefits. More than a million workers have exhausted PEUC so far (see column C43 in form ETA 5159 for PEUC here). Last week, more than half a million (552,000) workers were on Extended Benefits (EB), which is a program that unemployed workers can get on in some states if they’ve exhausted both regular state benefits and PEUC. But workers will soon begin to exhaust EB in large numbers as well. Figure A shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data are for October 24). Continuing claims are nearly 20 million above where they were a year ago. However, use caution interpreting trends over time since March because of reporting issues. Figure A Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–October 24, 2020 : *Use caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)* Date Regular state UI PEUC PUA Other programs (mostly STC and EB) 2019-03-23 1,905,627 – – 31,510 2019-03-30 1,858,954 – – 31,446 2019-04-06 1,727,261 – – 30,454 2019-04-13 1,700,689 – – 30,404 2019-04-20 1,645,387 – – 28,281 2019-04-27 1,630,382 – – 29,795 2019-05-04 1,536,652 – – 27,937 2019-05-11 1,540,486 – – 28,727 2019-05-18 1,506,501 – – 27,949 2019-05-25 1,519,345 – – 26,263 2019-06-01 1,535,572 – – 26,905 2019-06-08 1,520,520 – – 25,694 2019-06-15 1,556,252 – – 26,057 2019-06-22 1,586,714 – – 25,409 2019-06-29 1,608,769 – – 23,926 2019-07-06 1,700,329 – – 25,630 2019-07-13 1,694,876 – – 27,169 2019-07-20 1,676,883 – – 30,390 2019-07-27 1,662,427 – – 28,319 2019-08-03 1,676,979 – – 27,403 2019-08-10 1,616,985 – – 27,330 2019-08-17 1,613,394 – – 26,234 2019-08-24 1,564,203 – – 27,253 2019-08-31 1,473,997 – – 25,003 2019-09-07 1,462,776 – – 25,909 2019-09-14 1,397,267 – – 26,699 2019-09-21 1,380,668 – – 26,641 2019-09-28 1,390,061 – – 25,460 2019-10-05 1,366,978 – – 26,977 2019-10-12 1,384,208 – – 27,501 2019-10-19 1,416,816 – – 28,088 2019-10-26 1,420,918 – – 28,576 2019-11-02 1,447,411 – – 29,080 2019-11-09 1,457,789 – – 30,024 2019-11-16 1,541,860 – – 31,593 2019-11-23 1,505,742 – – 29,499 2019-11-30 1,752,141 – – 30,315 2019-12-07 1,725,237 – – 32,895 2019-12-14 1,796,247 – – 31,893 2019-12-21 1,773,949 – – 29,888 2019-12-28 2,143,802 – – 32,517 2020-01-04 2,245,684 – – 32,520 2020-01-11 2,137,910 – – 33,882 2020-01-18 2,075,857 – – 32,625 2020-01-25 2,148,764 – – 35,828 2020-02-01 2,084,204 – – 33,884 2020-02-08 2,095,001 – – 35,605 2020-02-15 2,057,774 – – 34,683 2020-02-22 2,101,301 – – 35,440 2020-02-29 2,054,129 – – 33,053 2020-03-07 1,973,560 – – 32,803 2020-03-14 2,071,070 – – 34,149 2020-03-21 3,410,969 – – 36,758 2020-03-28 8,158,043 – 52,494 48,963 2020-04-04 12,444,309 3,802 68,897 64,201 2020-04-11 16,249,334 31,392 210,939 89,915 2020-04-18 17,756,054 59,760 1,088,281 116,162 2020-04-25 21,723,230 86,972 3,498,790 158,031 2020-05-02 20,823,294 171,580 6,226,074 175,289 2020-05-09 22,725,217 232,057 7,929,418 216,576 2020-05-16 18,791,926 233,288 11,095,269 226,164 2020-05-23 19,022,578 534,958 9,761,879 247,595 2020-05-30 18,548,442 1,093,338 9,392,718 259,499 2020-06-06 18,330,293 867,226 11,067,905 325,282 2020-06-13 17,552,371 769,155 12,853,484 336,537 2020-06-20 17,316,689 850,461 13,870,617 392,042 2020-06-27 16,410,059 936,726 12,008,146 373,841 2020-07-04 17,188,908 940,001 13,179,377 495,296 2020-07-11 16,221,070 1,055,778 13,008,659 513,141 2020-07-18 16,691,210 1,155,692 12,956,006 518,584 2020-07-25 15,700,971 1,223,255 10,717,042 609,328 2020-08-01 15,112,240 1,289,125 11,212,827 433,416 2020-08-08 14,098,536 1,407,802 10,957,527 549,603 2020-08-15 13,792,016 1,393,314 13,550,916 469,028 2020-08-22 13,067,660 1,422,483 14,656,297 523,430 2020-08-29 13,283,721 1,527,166 14,467,064 490,514 2020-09-05 12,373,201 1,631,645 11,510,888 529,220 2020-09-12 12,363,489 1,806,241 11,828,338 510,610 2020-09-19 11,561,158 1,959,953 11,394,832 589,652 2020-09-26 10,172,332 2,786,333 11,172,335 579,582 2020-10-03 8,952,580 3,296,156 10,152,753 668,691 2020-10-10 8,038,175 3,683,496 10,324,779 614,875 2020-10-17 7,436,321 3,983,613 9,332,610 778,746 2020-10-24 6,837,876 4,143,389 9,433,127 742,719 Chart Data Download data The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. The data underlying the figure. Caution: Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their payment. Click here for notes. Data are not seasonally adjusted. A full list of programs can be found in the bottom panel of the table on page 4 at this link: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf. Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration, Initial Claims [ICSA], retrieved from Department of Labor (DOL), https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/persons.xls and https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf, November 12, 2020