Unemployment: Many recent claims are people refiling after temporary jobs, study shows.

Analysis finds that most recent benefit seekers lost jobs before

More than half of California jobless claims for the week ending July 25 were reopened claims by those who had previously reported losing a job, according to a new analysis by the California Policy Lab, an initiative that harnesses the expertise of academics from UCLA and UC Berkeley to address policy questions.

The study reveals that many people filing for unemployment in July likely also filed for unemployment earlier in the pandemic, were temporarily rehired, but had to file for unemployment again. In July, an average of 160,000 of these “additional claims” were filed each week, researchers said.

This means that even though the number of weekly initial unemployment claims began to climb back up in July, this increase can be almost entirely explained by additional claims, said Till von Wachter, a coauthor of the analysis, UCLA economics professor and faculty director at the California Policy Lab.

About 6.23 million distinct workers have filed for unemployment in California since midMarch — nearly onethird of the state workforce, according to the analysis — and those workers have collectively filed 8.18 million initial claims over the same period.

The additional claims are likely a result of the offandon reopening of the economy, von

Wachter said. Workers filing additional claims are most likely to come from the arts, entertainment and recreation industry — 77% of unemployment filings from this industry in the week ending July 25 were reopened. The next hardest hit industries were food and accommodations at 72% and retail at 70% additional claims. Before the pandemic, retail workers were the least likely group to be reopening unemployment claims.

“It reflects the resurgence of the coronavirus, the restrictions that are imposed based on that, and the increase in economic uncertainty,” von Wachter said. “It comes from the fact that the pandemic is not and has not been defeated.”

There’s a “silver lining,” he said — people are returning to work and the total number of people receiving unemployment insurance is gradually declining. Still, it’s at a slow rate, and new employment is unstable.

The number of claimants expecting to be called back to their job is also declining. In the past two weeks, 61% of new claimants said they expect to be recalled, down from 90% in late March.

People filing additional claims are more likely to be female, younger, and Hispanic or Asian American, according to the analysis.

“We’re seeing the same workers and same sectors that are affected by the pandemic being laid off again,” von Wachter said. “Unfortunately, that means that these groups have very low weekly benefit amounts and are hit particularly hard by the decline of the $600 federal pandemic unemployment compensation.”