California workers filed more initial claims for unemployment last week than they did the week before, raising questions about whether the state’s job market is recuperating from COVID-linked ailments.
During the week that ended on July 31, California workers filed 65,500 claims for jobless benefits, which was up 1,000 from the week ending on July 24, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
California last week produced one-fifth of all the jobless claims filed in the United States, fresh evidence that the state has convalesced more slowly than the U.S. from the side-effects of government-ordered shutdowns to combat the coronavirus.
Nationwide, workers filed 385,000 initial claims for unemployment last week, down 14,000 from the first-time claims the week before, the Labor Department reported. These numbers were adjusted to account for seasonal volatility.
The unemployment claims filed in California represent the highest weekly number posted since the state reopened its economy in mid-June.
Economists had predicted that reopening of the economy would enable the statewide job market to gain traction and banish the maladies unleashed by the COVID-triggered lockdowns.
Instead, jobless claims in California have risen to their highest level since June 12, which was just a few days before the state reopenings occurred. An estimated 68,000 initial unemployment claims were filed during that week.
Even worse, when using comparable numbers that weren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, California has accounted for a rising share of the jobless claims nationwide.
The unemployment claims filed in California last week represented 20.2% of all the claims nationwide, according to this news organization’s analysis of the jobless filings — even though the state has only 11.8% of the workers in the United States.
California’s jobless claims also are stuck at a level far higher than what they were the last time the statewide economy was healthy.
The number of unemployment filings from last week is 46% higher than what was typical during the two months before the business shutdowns were first instituted.
During January and February 2020, jobless claims averaged 44,800 a week, which was much less than the present trends.
This is another indicator that the California job market is functioning very differently now than how it operated before the COVID lockdowns began.
Making matters worse for people who have lost their jobs: The state Employment Development Department has bumbled in its efforts to pay unemployed workers on a timely basis — or pay them at all.
A broken call center and glitch-hobbled website that was based on a primitive computer language have coalesced to obstruct the EDD’s efforts to issue payments to California workers who had lost their jobs by the millions as businesses were shut down to stop the spread of the virus.
Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former EDD director, has been keeping in touch with a number of workforce boards about whether people are actively seeking jobs so they can depart the unemployment rolls.
It appears a significant number of unemployed California workers are staying on the sidelines and have not rushed to find new jobs.
Job postings statewide for the week of July 30 were 2.8% below the job postings for January 2020, the Track the Recovery website reports.
Nationwide, job postings were 4.9% higher than the January 2020 level, according to Track the Recovery.
“California’s employers and the workforce boards that supply workers to employers report no uptick in job applications, even as the schools begin to reopen, and as the September 4 cut-off for the unemployment supplement nears,” Bernick said.
