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The number of laid-off workers who applied for unemployment benefits declined slightly to 1.48 million last week, the 12th straight drop and a sign that layoffs are slowing but are still at a painfully high level.
The steady decline in claims suggests that the job market has begun to slowly heal from the pandemic, which shuttered businesses and sent the unemployment rate up to 14.7% in April, its highest level since the Great Depression.
Illinois saw an increase in the number of people filing first-time claims. In the week ended June 20, 46,005 people in the state sought unemployment insurance benefits, compared with 44,694 Illinois residents a week earlier.
Still really, really bad.
posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 9:08 am
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And how many millions returned to work? This statistic is only telling us one side of the equation.
If 1.7 million returned to work during this time it would actually be an overall increase of 0.2 million people to the workforce.
Comment by Swoosh Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 9:10 am
“The workers taking the hardest hit are in the accommodation and food services sector, which lost 44% of its jobs since February. There are 233,500 of those jobs missing…”
Yeesh.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-restaurants-bars-take-brunt-of-job-losses-amid-harsh-lockdown/
Comment by Tawk Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 9:13 am
More tax cuts for the rich and corporation bailouts will soon be in the works.
Comment by VerySmallRocks Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 9:46 am
This is a brutal number which represents real suffering for Illinois families.
Comment by Back to the Future Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 10:51 am
Swoosh, what’s your point? Before the virus i think the most initial claims we had ever seen was 650k. This is still more than twice that. It’s bad. Whether or not it better than last month is a separate point
Comment by Perrid Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 10:55 am
Remember, prior to this pandemic, the worst weekly claims number was 660,000. So yea, 1.5 million is a massive number.
Comment by Chicago Cynic Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 11:15 am
In addition to the unemployment rate and continuing unemployment claims, payroll employment is important to look at for sure. In part, that’s because states deal with and process unemployment claims differently.
May 2020 unemployment rate was 13.3% nationwide and Illinois’ was 15.2%. Only 8 states had higher unemployment rates than us.
Now look at Table E in the same Department of Labor data release (link below). Comparing May 2020 versus May 2019, Illinois had 737,900 fewer people employed than one year ago. That’s a 12.1% drop. Nationally, it was an 11.7% drop. We are more middle-of-the-pack in that metric, with 20 states having higher declines than us. And our neighboring (plus Rust Belt) states are: MI= -19.2%, KY= -14.8%, OH= -13.6%, WI= -13.0%, MN= -12.8%, [IL here,] IA= -11.0%, IN= -10.7%, MO= -9.8%.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to answer @Swoosh’s question (with official data) until next month when the June data come out. And we really won’t be able to start seeing the impact of Phase 4 until August, when the July 2020 data come out.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm
Comment by Frank Manzo IV Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 11:39 am
Frank M: Thanks for the expanded relevant info.
Comment by walker Thursday, Jun 25, 20 @ 11:55 am