Unemployment claims continue to decline
Unemployment claims in California fell slightly last week but remained above levels seen during the healthier job market before coronavirus-linked shutdowns began 15 months ago.
California workers filed about 64,700 initial claims for jobless benefits during the week ending June 19, which was 3,300 fewer than the 68,000 claims workers filed the previous week, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
Despite the improvement, jobless claims in California last week were 44% higher than levels in January and February 2020.
Applications for U.S. state unemployment insurance also fell slightly last week, though were higher than forecast, as the labor market meanders toward a full recovery.
Initial claims in regular state programs decreased by 7,000 to 411,000 in the week ended June 19, Labor Department data showed Thursday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 380,000 new applications. The prior week’s claims were revised up to 418,000.
On Thursday a new report showed the economy grew at a solid 6.4% rate in the first three months of the year, setting the stage for what economists believe may be the strongest year for the economy in about seven decades.
Growth in the gross domestic product, the country’s total output of goods and services, was unchanged from two previous estimates, the Commerce Department said Thursday, an acceleration from the 4.3% pace of the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, claims backlog grows
California workers are facing a steadily worsening backlog for their unemployment claims.
On June 12, the overall jobless claims logjam totaled 1.126 million, up about 1,100 from the bottleneck reported by the state’s Employment Development Department for June 5.
The overall backlog is derived from two numbers posted in an official dashboard posted by the EDD:
• Claims for unemployment benefits have required more than 21 days for the EDD to approve or reject. These totaled 222,559 on June 12, up 1,200 from the week before.
• Claims that are in limbo until the applicant can successfully certify his or her unemployment claim with the EDD. These totaled 903,532, down about 100 from the week before.
For the category of claims still awaiting certification by the unemployment applicant, the number reported June 12 was 3% higher than the lowest such number on record — 877,212 on Feb. 13.
For 18 weeks, the EDD has been posting its dashboards designed to shed some light on the progress that’s being made to handle the avalanche of jobless claims in California.
The June 12 number for claims requiring more than 21 days to be paid or rejected was 16.8% higher than the average number for that category for the 18 weeks, while the latest figure for claims stuck in some sort of certification limbo was just a tiny bit higher than the 18week average. The overall backlog, combining both categories, was 3.3% above
the average for the 18 weeks.
CDC extends federal eviction ban
The Biden administration on Thursday extended the nationwide ban on evictions for a month to help millions of tenants unable to make rent payments during the coronavirus pandemic, but said this is the last time it plans to do so.
California was expected to do the same by the end of the week.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, extended the evictions moratorium from June 30 until July 31. The CDC said “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”
By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of June 7, roughly 3.2 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.