Updated state unemployment numbers: Large shares of the labor force have filed for unemployment in every state [feedly]

Updated state unemployment numbers: Large shares of the labor force have filed for unemployment in every state
https://www.epi.org/blog/updated-state-unemployment-numbers-large-shares-of-the-labor-force-have-filed-for-unemployment-in-every-state/

he Department of Labor released the most recent unemployment insurance (UI) claims data yesterday, showing that another 2.8 million people filed for unemployment last week (not seasonally adjusted). In the past seven weeks, more than 30 million workers applied for UI benefits across the country, or nearly one in five workers.

Despite most states seeing a decline in UI claims filed relative to last week, six states saw increases in UI claims. Maine saw the largest percent increase in claims (111.1%) compared with the prior week, followed by Maryland (72.1%), New Mexico (38.9%), Oklahoma (30.0%), New Jersey (21.6%), and Connecticut (9.5%).

After California, Texas residents filed the second most UI claims last week, followed by Georgia. This comes after several states have allowed restaurants and similar businesses to reopen, including many in the South and Midwest, indicating that state policymakers are risking a greater outbreak with very little of the economic benefits they had expected.

Figure A and Table 1 below compare UI claims filed last week with the prior week and the pre-virus period, in both level and percent terms. It also shows the cumulative number of unemployment claims since March 7 and that number as a share of each state's labor force. In three states, almost a third of the workforce filed an initial claim during the past two months: Kentucky (32.3%), Hawaii (31.7%), and Georgia (31.1%).

Figure A

Every state, especially many in the South, is continuing to struggle relative to the pre-virus period. Last week, Oklahoma saw the largest percent increase in claims (4,325%) compared with the pre-virus period of any state. Eight of the 10 states that had the highest percent change in initial UI claims relative to the pre-virus period are in the South: Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

Sadly, the high amount of UI claims filings understates the true extent of joblessness. Using new survey data, we estimate that millions of people are jobless but unable to claim the unemployment benefits they need simply because the system is overburdened. A recent report by Michele Evermore of the National Employment Law Project (NELP) outline how some states—including Florida—have deliberately built their UI systems to discourage applicants and fail workers. This underscores the importance of investing in government services that we may all need at some point in our lives when we are most in need of support.

To mitigate the economic harm to workers, the next federal relief and recovery package should make substantial additional investments in unemployment compensation, including providing additional funding to states to hire the staff they need to speed up processing and to make improvements to websites and other administrative infrastructure. Congress should also extend the across-the-board $600 increase in weekly unemployment benefits well past its expiration at the end of July—at least until unemployment is falling rapidly and is at a manageable level.

Additionally, policymakers must enact and enforce measures to keep workers safe, and extend stay-at-home orders until the coronavirus curve has flattened. At the same time, they must also address gaps in existing coronavirus relief and recovery measures, including insufficient aid to state and local governments.

Table 1

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White Unemployment Rose More than Black Unemployment and No One Notices [feedly]

White Unemployment Rose More than Black Unemployment and No One Notices
https://cepr.net/white-unemployment-rose-more-than-black-unemployment-and-no-one-notices/

One of the most striking items in a very striking employment report yesterday is that white unemployment has actually risen slightly more than black unemployment in this crisis. White unemployment has risenfrom 3.1 percent in February to 14.2 percent in April, a rise of 11.1 percentage points. Black unemployment rose from 5.8 percent to 16.7 percent, an increase of 10.9 percentage points. 

While the difference is small and surely statistically insignificant, it does go opposite the usual pattern in a downturn, in which blacks see their unemployment rate rise by twice as much, or more, than the increase in white unemployment. Unfortunately, the difference is probably not for a good reason. Blacks are more likely to be working at jobs where they are classified as essential workers and therefore endangering their health by staying at work through this crisis. 

That is not a pretty picture, but one that deserves attention.

The post White Unemployment Rose More than Black Unemployment and No One Notices appeared first on Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Joe Biden calls for a 'swift, full, and transparent investigation' of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery after footage of the incident emerges [feedly]

Joe Biden calls for a 'swift, full, and transparent investigation' of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery after footage of the incident emerges
https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-calls-for-investigation-of-ahmaud-arbery-killing-2020-5?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds

• Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden called for an investigation into the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. 
• Arbery, a black man, was shot and killed in a wealthy coastal Georgia town in February by two white neighbors. 
• Relatives and friends have said the incident was racially motivated and are concerned with their inability to protest and organize due to the coronavirus pandemic. 
• A video of the alleged incident has gone viral on Twitter. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Former Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden called for an investigation into the killing of Ahmaud Arbery after a video of the incident emerged.

Abery, a 25-year-old from Brunswick, Georgia, was killed in Februarywhile jogging in a coastal town. He ran past Gregory McMichael who called to his son Travis McMichael before grabbing their guns and following Arbery in a truck. 

The elder McMichael is a former police officer and told police, he said the duo was acting in self-defense and believed Arbery was tied to several break-ins in the area. 

Video of the alleged incident shows a truck driving behind Arbery jogging, before stopping. One man gets out to confront Arbery, there's an altercation, and two shots ring out.

 

In a tweet on Tuesday night, Biden wrote: "The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood. My heart goes out to his family, who deserve justice and deserve it now. It is time for a swift, full, and transparent investigation into his murder."

According to CNN, A Georgia district attorney is recommending that the case goes to a grand jury. The coronavirus pandemic has prevented courts from using a grand jury but Tom Durden, the district attorney for the Atlantic Judicial Circuit said: "he expects to present the case to the next available grand jury in Glynn County to consider whether charges are merited for those involved in Arbery's death."

The family of Arbery says he was unarmed and most likely jogging for exercise. The police report also did not indicate whether Arbery was armed or not. 

No charges have been brought against either of the McMichaels. 

McMichael said Arbery was in the property of a house that was partially opened but under construction. Georgia's state's citizen's arrest law could justify the duo chasing Arbery because they suspected he was a criminal, George E. Barnhill, a prosecutor who previously worked the case before recusing himself over conflict of interest, said according to The New York Times. 

Barnhill said: "that he did not believe there was evidence of a crime, noting that Gregory McMichael and his son had been legally carrying their weapons under Georgia law."

Additionally, he wrote that the McMichaels had "solid firsthand probable cause," and were justified in chasing him because they thought he was a burglary suspect, under the state's citizen's arrest law, according to The Times.

S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Arbery family said: "at best" the men "had the authority to follow Arbery and send law enforcement to that location," according to CNN. 

He added that the McMichaels were unable to answer the 911 dispatcher's questions on what criminal activity Arbery was doing. 

Family and friends previously said they were concerned that social distancing, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, was limiting their ability to protest and gather attention to the case. Their concerns is that the killing was racially motivated. 

"We can't do anything because of this corona stuff," Wanda Cooper, Arbery's mother told The Times. "We thought about walking out where the shooting occurred, just doing a little march, but we can't be out right now."

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EPI: The extra $600 in unemployment insurance has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the coronavirus and should be extended [feedly]

The extra $600 in unemployment insurance has been the best response yet to the economic shock of the coronavirus and should be extended
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-extra-600-in-unemployment-insurance-has-been-the-best-response-yet-to-the-economic-shock-of-the-coronavirus-and-should-be-extended/

The CARES Act, the $2 trillion-plus package to provide economic relief and recovery from the coronavirus shock in early April was, for many reasons, deeply imperfect. But the modifications the CARES Act made to the nation's unemployment insurance (UI) system are an utterly crucial lifeline for tens of millions of American workers. Besides temporarily expanding the eligibility criteria for who qualifies for unemployment benefits through the end of the year and providing an additional 13 weeks of state UI benefits, the CARES Act also provided an extra $600 per week in UI payments through the end of July.

This $600 top-up has been fiercely criticized by some since the Act passed—e.g. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stated that it would be extended past July only "over our dead bodies"—but the criticism is either ill-informed or in bad faith. The extra $600 has been by far the most effective part our economic policy response to the coronavirus shock. It is likely improving—not degrading—labor market efficiency, and we should build on this and make the nation's unemployment insurance system well-resourced and far more generous even in normal times.

The history of how a flat $600 in additional UI benefits was agreed upon by policymakers is straightforward, if depressing. In normal times, these benefits are stingy, typically replacing between one-third to one-half of a typical worker's weekly wage. For decades, too many economists and policymakers have labored under a number of wrong preconceptions about the labor market, and one of the most damaging was that decent jobs were plentiful and easy to get, and the only thing keeping potential workers out of these jobs for any stretch of time was workers' own motivation, which could be sapped if benefits were too generous. It was the old and dumb idea that the U.S. social safety net—despite being by far the stingiest in the advanced world—had become a too-comfortable "hammock." (For what it's worth, the evidence from the aftermath of the Great Recession reveals that extended UI benefits had little or no effect on whether a worker found a job—meaning it wasn't UI benefits that were keeping workers out of work—it was a lack of demand for workers.)

The economic shock of the coronavirus was an event so obviously unrelated to the motivations of individual workers that policymakers were willing to substantially (if temporarily) increase the generosity of unemployment benefits. Our preference would have been for a 100% replacement rate up to a quite generous maximum benefit. But decades of disinvestment in the administrative capacity of state UI offices left them incapable of flexibly calculating each new applicant's benefit amount with a 100% replacement rate. (Case in point: most offices are still using the 1970s-era programming language COBOL to run their computers). State offices are capable of administering a flat-rate increase, however. So, policymakers in Congress came up with a smart and compassionate second-best solution of picking a flat-rate boost to benefits that would leave the average worker (and most workers overall) with 100% of their pre-crisis earnings.

But the necessity of the one-size-fits-all approach means that workers who earned less than the average worker before the crises will receive benefits that are somewhat higher than 100% of their previous wage. Many conservatives claim this is somehow an economic disaster. They're wrong—it's actually great.

For the purpose of generating a rapid macroeconomic recovery from this shock, the more money getting into the pockets of low- and moderate-wage workers, the better. Without generous relief, these workers and their families would have had to run down meager savings and go into debt just to survive during the lockdown period. Besides causing avoidable human misery, this would severely hamper spending—and, by extension, the overall economic recovery—when the public health all-clear is eventually sounded.

The primary complaint waged against the extra $600 is that it will impede the otherwise efficient functioning of low-wage labor markets. Forgive our eye-roll. The labor market has been rigged against low and moderate-wage workers for decades, and pre-crisis earnings for these workers were far too low, on both moral and efficiency grounds. Plus, the economic argument against high UI replacement rates was that we'd sap workers' motivation to pound the pavement searching for jobs. But we're in the midst of legally enforced physical distancing to fight an epidemic – the less pavement-pounding the better. Further, the economy may have lost more than 30 million jobs in the last month. Even without the epidemic it would be stupid and cruel to use cutbacks to UI benefits that make them too stingy to live on as a cudgel to demand people somehow find a job quickly in an absolute nightmare of a job market.

Conservatives have floated stories of businesses trying to re-open now that can't find workers because potential employees "make more collecting unemployment." Well, if businesses are really serious about re-opening (and many shouldn't be) there's an easy cure for this—offer wages that are high enough to entice potential workers to come to work. Policymakers could aid this effort and level out incentives in a couple of ways. First, they could let laid-off workers keep their extra $600 weekly payment (or at least some increment of it) even after they find a new job. Also, they could offer a universal wage credit (phased out above the median wage, say) that boosts workers' pay so long as the higher UI benefits persist. If the problem conservatives have with this $600 really is just the economics of incentives and not simply annoyance that lower-wage workers are finally getting some money in their pockets, this is an easy way to address it.

It is hardly a shock that many potential workers are leery about venturing into public to work these days. In an efficient labor market—where the playing field is level between workers and employers—the wage offers needed to get people to overcome their wariness and go to work in the face of coronavirus fears should be increasing. But U.S. labor markets are not efficient or balanced even in the best of times, and in the coronavirus-affected labor market with businesses shuttering right and left, it seems far from clear that competition between employers would push up wages for workers. In a sense, the extra $600 is helping labor markets reach a more reasonable equilibrium where workers are actually compensated appropriately if they are willing to shoulder the risk and excess burden of showing up to a job in the midst of an epidemic.

And this is something we can afford and constitutes exactly the sort of thing public debt should be spent on. Money spent on continuing crucial unemployment insurance provisions will help avoid a prolonged period of high unemployment that will do far more serious and persistent damage to the economy. In the last six weeks, close to 30 million workers have applied for unemployment insurance. It's worth noting as a point of comparison that those 30 million workers would need to be provided an extra $1,400 per week for a year to match the fiscal size of the 2017 tax cuts aimed at corporations and the rich.

Do we wish the U.S. social insurance system—and particularly the unemployment insurance system—was much better-resourced and able to respond to the current shock with something more nuanced than an across-the-board $600 increase in weekly benefits? We do. But you go into a generational economic crisis with the social insurance system you have, not the one you wish you had. Given the constraints, the extra $600 is smart and compassionate and policymakers should extend all (or at least most) of this extra boost well past July—at least until unemployment is falling rapidly and at a manageable level.

And we sure hope those bemoaning the smart and compassionate second-best response to an eroded UI system will join the rest of us in building up the system's capacity and generosity after the current crisis ends.

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How Many People Will Patent Monopolies Kill In This Pandemic? [feedly]

Baker can be eccentric, but I luv the 'class' zingers he comes up with regularly.

How Many People Will Patent Monopolies Kill In This Pandemic?
https://cepr.net/how-many-people-will-patent-monopolies-kill-in-this-pandemic/

No one wants to die, but hey, who wouldn't be willing to sacrifice their life to protect someone's patent monopoly? That is a question that is implicitly raised in this New York Times piece on the race to develop an effective vaccine against the coronavirus. Near the beginning the piece tells readers:

"In an era of intense nationalism, the geopolitics of the vaccine race are growing as complex as the medicine. The months of mutual vilification between the United States and China over the origins of the virus have poisoned most efforts at cooperation between them. The U.S. government is already warning that American innovations must be protected from theft — chiefly from Beijing."

Okay, what does "theft" by China, or anyone else, mean in this context? Would China be preventing U.S. scientists from moving ahead with the development of a vaccine? Would it be preventing drug companies from manufacturing and distributing the vaccine?

Of course, neither of these possibilities makes any sense. Nothing China might do with knowledge gained from U.S. researchers would obstruct our own development of a vaccine. The only "risk" here is that China might jump ahead and be able to vaccinate its own people, and possibly people in other countries (including the U.S.) before a U.S. produced vaccine is available. This could be an embarrassment to Donald Trump and may also reduce the potential profits of U.S. drug companies, but it could mean that hundreds of thousands of lives are saved.

Apparently the New York Times didn't think it was worth mentioning that the Trump administration's policies might lead to massive loss of life to protect his ego and industry profits, but that is the unavoidable implication of the information in the article.

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Enlighten Radio:Talking Socialism Podcasts: May Day, Plague Year, Edition

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Blog: Enlighten Radio
Post: Talking Socialism Podcasts: May Day, Plague Year, Edition
Link: https://www.enlightenradio.org/2020/05/talking-socialism-podcasts-may-day.html

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