COVID economic collapse felt across state
Illinois leads national increase in newly filed claims for unemployment
The metro Chicago area leads the state in the rise in unemployment year to year, with restaurants and theaters hit particularly hard. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
Illinois leads a national rise in newly filed unemployment claims, as the impact of the COVID-19 economic collapse is being felt across the state.
The latest unemployment report filed by the U.S. Department of Labor last week saw newly filed claims rise across the nation to 778,000, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week’s revised count. Illinois accounted for much of that, as it saw new claims for the week bounce back up to 65,000 after 47,000 filed for benefits statewide the week before.
Gov. Pritzker has repeatedly complained about fraudulent filings for unemployment, and it’s unclear how much of last week’s increase was due to fraud. Michigan also saw an increase of 16,000 new claims week to week. Illinois also saw new claims filed by independent contractors, freelancers, and so-called gig workers under the expanded federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program rise to 15,000 from 10,000 the week before, and Indiana experienced a similar increase to 16,000 new PUA claims for the week.
Nine months into the pandemic, new weekly claims for unemployment insurance have never dipped below the pre-COVID one-week record of 695,000 filings in a week set during the 1982 recession, not since 3.3 million idled workers filed in mid-March, soon followed by the new record of 6.9 million new claims in a week. New claims have hovered in the 750,000 range for weeks but have surged the last two weeks after briefly dropping to 711,000.
At the same time, the Illinois Department of Employment Security reported that the coronavirus economic collapse is being felt across the state in all 14 metropolitan areas. An IDES news release stated: “The number of nonfarm jobs decreased in all 14 Illinois metropolitan areas. Total nonfarm jobs were down in Peoria (-9.8 percent, -16,800), Elgin (-9.1 percent, -24,200), and Rockford (-8.2 percent, -12,400). In Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights, jobs were down 7.2 percent (-275,700). No industry sector saw job gains in a majority of metro areas.”
Chicago and the suburbs actually experienced the worst rise in the unemployment rate year to year in October, up from 3.2 percent last year to 7.8 percent this year, topping the statewide unemployment rate of 6.5 percent. Decatur was the only other metro area above the state average, at 6.7 percent, up from 4.9 percent last October.
Statewide, Illinois was down 412,000 jobs from a year ago, 276,000 of those lost in the metro Chicago area including Arlington Heights and Naperville.
“As the state works to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and protect residents from this deadly virus, IDES will continue to provide services to claimants, job seekers, and employers as fast as possible,” said Deputy Gov. Dan Hynes in a statement. “We also need the federal government to take action. Every metro area and its claimants will be impacted by the expiration of the federal CARES Act unemployment programs in just a few short weeks,” with the end of the year, “and IDES and the Pritzker administration will continue to call on the federal government to provide claimant stability through the end of this pandemic.”
The U.S. Labor Department reported: “The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 827,710 in the week ending November 21, an increase of 78,372 (or 10.5 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 48,360 (or 6.5 percent) from the previous week. There were 252,428 initial claims in the comparable week in 2019.”
According to the Labor Department, 20.4 million idled U.S. workers were on some form of unemployment insurance, an increase of 135,000 from the previous week and many times the 1.5 million workers on unemployment for the same week a year ago.