Commuter traffic travels along Interstate 580 in Livermore, June 15, 2021. Unemployment claims in California jumped last week, a disquieting indicator that the statewide job market continues to wobble despite attempts to reopen the economy in the wake of coronavirus-linked shutdowns.
Unemployment claims in California jumped last week, a disquieting signal that the statewide job market continues to wobble despite attempts to reopen the economy in the wake of coronavirus-linked shutdowns.
California workers filed 68,600 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the week that ended on June 12, an increase of 15,700 from the 52,900 claims that were filed during the week ending June 5, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday.
Nationwide, workers filed 412,000 first-time claims for jobless benefits last week, an increase of 37,000 from the 375,000 claims that were filed the week before, according to the Labor Department.
The increase in unemployment claims in California suggests that the state’s economy hasn’t fully recovered from the brutal blows it has taken since March 2020, when state and local government agencies launched widespread business shutdowns to combat the coronavirus.
California workers lost their jobs in historic numbers during March and April of 2020 due to the lockdowns to battle the spread of the deadly bug.
Despite a rebound in hiring, the economy in both the Bay Area and California could be years away from recovering all of the jobs those regions lost during those two months.
For 10 weeks in a row, California unemployment claims have remained below 100,000.
But the current amount of filings remains far above what the state experienced during January 2020 and February 2020, the final two months before the business shutdowns began.
The 68,600 claims filed last week are a whopping 53% higher than what occurred over the first two months of 2020 when jobless filings averaged 44,800 a week, this news organization’s analysis of the claims patterns shows.
The state is also experiencing a much greater share than normal of the jobless claims being filed in the entire nation.
California accounted for 17% of all of the jobless claims filed nationwide last week — even though California has only 11.8% of the nation’s workforce.
The state’s share of the jobless filings nationwide has been above normal for nine consecutive weeks, using comparable California and national numbers that weren’t adjusted for seasonal variations.
The plight of California workers appears particularly grim in light of the state Employment Development Department’s floundering efforts to issue payments to California workers who had lost their jobs by the millions.
A broken phone call center and glitch-ridden website that was based on a primitive computer language have coalesced to hobble the EDD’s efforts to issue payments to California workers who are unemployed.
