JOBLESS CLAIMS JUMP TO NEARLY 1 MILLION

Additional 284,000 gig, self-employed workers apply for benefits

New unemployment claims jumped by 181,000 to 965,000 last week, the largest increase since the beginning of the pandemic.

WASHINGTON — The number of new unemployment claims filed jumped by 181,000 to 965,000 last week, the largest increase since the beginning of the pandemic.

It was the highest number of new unemployment claims since August.

An additional 284,000 claims were filed for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the insurance for gig and selfemployed workers.

The weekly report is President Donald Trump’s last before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20. Biden will inherit a labor market badly weakened by the coronavirus pandemic and an economic recovery that appears to have stalled: 140,000 people lost their jobs in December, the first decline in months, with the U.S. still down millions of jobs since February.

The dire numbers served as a backdrop for Biden as he formally unveiled an ambitious stimulus package proposal on Thursday, which could top $1 trillion, and is to include an expansion of the child tax credit, a $2,000 stimulus payment, and other assistance for the economy.

Democrats were already using the weak labor to argue about the necessity of more aid.

John Leer, an economist at Morning Consult, said the increase could be explained in part by two other factors: states working through backlogs that built up over the holidays and more incentives and ability for workers who had not filed claims or whose claims had lapsed to file claims. As the aid package Congress passed in December kicks in, workers are now eligible for a $300 a week unemployment supplement on top of whatever payment they are receiving from the state.

“There are a lot of people who it isn’t worth their effort to go through filing claims for $100 a week, but all of a sudden at $400 a week, it becomes worth their while,” Leer said. “There are so many confounding factors that it’s dangerous to read too much into one week’s numbers.”

Morning Consult’s polling data on unemployment, he said, had showed last week to be better than the week before it.

Economists say the struggles can be explained, in part, by the delay Congress allowed between the summer, when many fiscal aid programs expired and December, when lawmakers agreed on a new package after months of stalemate.

The number of new jobless claims has come down since the earliest days of the pandemic, but remains at a extremely high level week in and week out.

These claims have been higher for more than 40 weeks than those in the Great Recession.

The total number of continuing people in any of the unemployment programs at the end of the year was 18.4 million, although officials have cautioned that the number is inflated by accounting issues and duplicate claims.