Jobless claims jump — again

If COVID isn’t going away in California, neither are its economic effects. Despite ongoing efforts to unsnarl supply chain bottlenecks, a record 101 container ships were waiting Monday to unload cargo at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports — which nevertheless handled in November the lowest number of loaded inbound containers since June 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. One reason for the slowdown: persistent worker shortages, a challenge that doesn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon. More than 57,000 Californians filed new jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 11, according to federal data released Thursday — an increase of nearly 2,000 from the week before.

Michael Bernick, an attorney at Duane Morris and a former director of the state Employment Development Department: “Heading into 2022, the main employment narratives in California are the slow return to work and low labor force participation rate (61.8% as of October) … and how the economy continues to be awash in federal and state government spending. … This inflation rate has undermined the wage gains for workers in California, particularly lower-wage workers, which was one of the positive results of the tight labor market of the past year.”

However, it appears that some federal spending might be curtailed, at least temporarily. With President Joe Biden’s massive Build Back Better spending package stalled in Congress, California families on Wednesday began receiving the final installment of the expanded child tax credit. Advocates warn that if the benefit isn’t resuscitated, nearly 2 million California children could fall back under the poverty line or even deeper into poverty.