Explainer: No one really knows how many Americans need unemployment benefits

FILE PHOTO: People who lost their jobs wait in line to file for unemployment benefits, following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease , at Arkansas Workforce Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas, U.S. April 6, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

But the simplest way to calculate that impact - tallying up the number of initial unemployment claims filed each week since a national emergency was declared in March, for a total of 42.6 million - is increasingly flawed, analysts say. Another way to figure out who needs jobless benefits could be to focus on the number of people who are currently receiving benefits and those who have applied recently, said Shierholz.

Many states did not get this program up and running until April or May, and there was no data on the programs for 15 states and the District of Columbia in the most recent claims report from the DOL. Kansas, for example, started paying out PUA benefits the week of May 25 and said it reported numbers to the DOL. Its figures, however, did not appear in the weekly report. Georgia’s labor department said the staff is working on a program to report the benefits to the federal government, while Arizona and Florida said the information has not shown up in the national report because they are only required to report it once a month.

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