State jobless rates hit highest level in month.

State jobless applications at their highest level in a month

Jobless claims in California soared last week and climbed to their highest levels in a month, an ominous sign that the state’s moribund economy has yet to recover from coronavirus-linked ailments.

An estimated 181,600 California workers filed initial claims for jobless benefits last week, up 20,600 from the previous week, according to a federal report released Thursday.

“Virtually the entire state has been in a more restricted activity for almost two months,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “Retailers, restaurants, hotels have had to lay off people.”

Last week’s claims represent the highest weekly total in about a month. During the week that ended on Dec. 12, California workers filed 202,600 first-time claims for unemployment benefits, the U.S. Labor Department reported.

“The people who have been laid off are very unlikely to get their jobs back before we beat the pandemic,” Levy said.

Most Bay Area counties were forced to curtail business activities to arrest the spread of the coronavirus under state mandates in mid-November, then enacted even sharper restrictions in early December as hospitals began to fill with patients.

“The high numbers are striking given that they represent new claims,” said Michael Bernick, an employment attorney with law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the Employment Development Department.

The state EDD has struggled to keep up with the record numbers of unemployment claims.

“The high numbers of California claims directly reflect the increased number of COVID cases, economic lockdowns, and ongoing declines for in-person economic activities,” Bernick said.

In a further complication for California’s reeling workforce: A widening fraud problem has prompted the EDD to halt payments on 1.4 million unemployment claims. The agency’s move, while directed at fraud woes, might also have halted payments for legitimate claims.

California’s 1.4 million unemployment fraud cases could require one month to resolve, EDD officials have told a key state lawmaker, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), who

is the chair of the powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee.

The EDD’s ongoing struggles have frustrated countless workers, including Anthony Sanfilippo, a San Jose resident, who has been battling to unlock his account with the EDD after the state agency flagged it for possible fraud and suspended payments.

Sanfilippo believes the EDD has steadily made matters worse.

“Now it’s a dumpster fire,” Sanfilippo said.

In the United States, first-time unemployment claims, adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, totaled 965,000 for the week that ended Jan. 9. That was an increase of 181,000 from the total for the week ending Jan. 2 of 784,000.

In comparing claims that weren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, California still has a staggering share of the claims filed nationwide, this news organization’s analysis of the unemployment figures shows.

On that basis, California accounted for a staggering 15.8% of all the claims filed nationwide last week. This share, however, was an improvement from the prior week, when California accounted for 17.5% of all the claims filed in the United States.

California still is enduring an outsized share of the unemployment claims in the U.S., since the state represents just 11% of the national labor force.

“We are in for two to four more very difficult months,” Levy said. “The bottom line is that this is not going to go away any time soon.”