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California workers filed more jobless claims last week than the week before, a setback that heightens uncertainty about the strength of the state-wide economic recovery.
California workers filed 61,900 initial jobless claims in the week ending Sept. 4, up 5,600 from the 56,300 workers who first filed jobless claims in the past. the week ending Aug. 28, the US Department of Labor reported on Thursday.
The surge in claims ended a wave of improvement for California in which jobless claims fell for three straight weeks.
Now unemployment records are well above what is normal for a healthy economy in California, an indication that coronavirus-related business closures continue to haunt the job market statewide.
Latest deposits are 38% higher than they had on average in January 2020 and February 2020, when jobless claims averaged 44,800 per week. It was the last two months before state and local government agencies ordered large-scale shutdowns to combat the spread of the deadly virus.
Some experts believe that the September 4 termination of a weekly federal supplement of $ 300 for unemployment claims that increased the total amount of benefits could encourage workers to seek employment rather than continue to collect unemployment.
However, it could be months before a clear picture emerges as to whether large numbers of workers decide to avoid unemployment benefits and attempt to seek employment.
The increase in claims in California suggests the Golden State is recovering from its coronavirus-related illnesses at a much slower rate than the United States as a whole.
Last week, 310,000 workers across the country filed initial jobless claims, which is a drop of 35,000 from the 345,000 who filed for unemployment benefits in the United States the previous week, reported the Department of Labor. These figures have been adjusted for seasonal variations.
Using comparable numbers that aren’t adjusted to compensate for seasonal volatility, California now accounts for more than one in five jobless claims – a staggering 21.8% – that are filed in the United States.
Make it more difficult: California workers have faced bureaucratic hurdles created by the Department of Employment Development. ESD has stumbled in its attempts to pay the unemployed on time – or not at all.
A downed call center and a shackled website that relied on primitive computer language merged to thwart EDD’s efforts to make payments to California workers who had lost their jobs by the millions as businesses closed. to stop the spread of the virus.
California only recovered 58.3% of the jobs it lost in March 2020 and April 2020 when 2.71 million workers statewide lost their jobs due to the start of business closures. From May 2020 to July 2021, the state only recovered 1.58 million lost jobs.
Overall, the United States has recovered 74.5% of its lost jobs, further proof of how slow California is lagging behind the nationwide employment rebound.
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