Unemployment claims continue to climb by the millions

With help from Eleanor Mueller and Daniel Lippman

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Quick Fix


— As jobless claims climb above 26 million, only 10 states are currently able to pay benefits to self-employed workers.

— States key to President Donald Trump’s reelection are seeing higher-than-average layoffs.

— Georgia will allow some businesses to reopen today, but most Americans think going back to work isn’t worth the risk.

GOOD MORNING. It’s Friday, April 24, and this is Morning Shift, your tipsheet on employment and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @RebeccaARainey, @IanKullgren, and @TimothyNoah1.

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Driving the Day

UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS CONTINUE TO CLIMB: Americans filed 4.4 million jobless claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, pushing the five-week total above 26 million, your host reports.

The new figure suggests the unemployment rate is approaching the 25 percent peak recorded in 1933 during the Great Depression. Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, estimates unemployment is now at 18.3 percent, and an analysis by POLITICO’s Andrew McGill concludes that 16 percent of American workers have sought unemployment benefits since mid-March. “It will take several more weeks before claims drop below one million,” says Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

The New Hampshire Employee Security center, which handles unemployment claims. | AP Photo/Charles Krupa

SOME STILL WAITING... Most states still haven’t begun to process claims for self-employed and other workers made newly eligible for jobless benefits on an emergency basis under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. Indeed, only 10 states have updated their systems to pay out benefits to these workers, the Labor Department said Thursday.

RELATED: “IG faults low staffing levels and creaky tech at state unemployment offices,” from POLITICO’s Eleanor Mueller

In the States

BATTLEGROUND STATES BEAR BRUNT OF LAYOFFS: The states that Trump will need to win 2020 are also among those hit hardest by layoffs, our Megan Cassella reports.

“Job losses are piling up in places like Michigan, where more than one in four workers applied for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks,” Megan writes. “In Pennsylvania, another key Rust Belt state that voted for Trump in 2016, nearly one-fourth of the workforce has filed an unemployment claim since mid-March. Ohio is seeing more than 17 percent of workers filing jobless claims, outpacing the national average of 16.1 percent, as is Minnesota, a state Trump narrowly lost.

“The numbers are likely to continue rising for weeks, as states work through a backlog of applications and race to dole out benefits to gig workers and others who are newly eligible for aid. They’ll remain elevated as long as restaurants, retail stores and other non-essential businesses remain shuttered. And even once some areas of the country begin to reopen, it could be months or years before Americans are back to work at the same levels as before — undercutting Trump’s plans to hang his re-election bid on leading the economy to a robust recovery.”

MOST AMERICANS SUPPORT STAYING HOME OVER BOOSTING ECONOMY: Although some Georgia businesses will reopen their doors today in an effort to restart the state’s economy, most Americans say that remaining at home to limit the coronavirus’ spread is more important, POLITICO’s Quint Forgey reports.

A CBS News poll released Thursday reports that 70 percent of respondents believe the country’s top priority should be to “try to slow the spread of coronavirus by keeping people home and social distancing, even if the economy is hurt in the short term.” Only 30 percent think the top national priority should instead be to “try to get the economy going by sending people back to work, even if it means more people might be exposed to coronavirus.”

Other southern states including South Carolina, have also outlined plans to reopen soon, despite still-climbing cases of coronavirus. Businesses in Tennessee are slated to reopen as early as next week. The CBS News poll was conducted April 20-22, surveying 2,112 U.S. residents. Its margin of sampling error is plus-or-minus 2.5 percentage points.

MORE: “Reopening the economy vs. keeping it shut longer. What’s more costly?” from The Los Angeles Times

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Immigration

IMMIGRANTS LEFT OUT OF CORONAVIRUS RELIEF: More than 15 million immigrants and their families won’t receive a coronavirus relief stimulus check, your host reports with Katherine Landergan, because Congress limited eligibility to workers who possess a Social Security number. Most of this excluded group consists of undocumented immigrants, but it also includes some legal immigrants, including many foreign students and spouses. Some of these immigrants also pay taxes, but file with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number.

A Republican congressional aide said the benefits were "limited to citizens and residents of the U.S. that are legally permitted to work here.” The students, spouses, and other legal residents in question can use their ITIN for “many different reasons related to having to pay U.S. tax,” the aide explained, but not to work here.

Democratic governors and mayors are scrambling to fill in the gap. California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week the creation of a $125 million private-public fund to help see undocumented immigrants through the crisis. Minneapolis and Chicago also offered their coronavirus-relief programs to undocumented immigrants.

But California’s effort has drawn legal pushback, POLITICO’s Jeremy B. White reports. A pair of Republican Assembly candidates sued the state over the relief fund, arguing that California exceeded its authority because state and federal law don’t permit undocumented immigrants to receive unemployment benefits.

Related: “To help immigrants who won’t get stimulus checks, an online effort asks people to give up their own,” from The Washington Post

Business Relief

ADDITIONAL AID FOR SMALL BUSINESSES SENT TO TRUMP’S DESK: The House on Thursday approved nearly $500 billion in additional coronavirus aid after two weeks of negotiations between party leaders and the White House, POLITICO’s Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris report. The bill will provide an immediate $321 billion infusion to the Paycheck Protection Program, the small business rescue fund aimed at preventing layoffs, which ran out of money last week. The legislation now awaits Trump’s signature.

2020 Watch

#METOO GRAPPLES WITH BIDEN ALLEGATIONS: The #MeToo movement is struggling to address the sexual assault allegations against presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, POLITICO’s Holly Otterbein and Marc Caputo report.

“Supporters of President Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by multiple women, have seized on Biden and other Democrats’ past comments about believing women’s accusations as proof of hypocrisy,” the pair write. “And victims fear that what they see as the botched handling of [Tara] Reade’s allegations by fellow activists, the media and politicians has threatened one of the movement’s hardest-fought gains.”

Unions

SCOOP: FROM DANIEL LIPPMAN — DELAWARE UNION LEADER’S QUESTIONABLE POSTS ON COVID-19: James Maravelias, the president of the Delaware AFL-CIO and president of the Delaware Building Trades, has posted a number of recent public Facebook posts that seem to cross the line into racial remarks by blaming Asians for the coronavirus and also saying that Greeks and Sicilians are "superior" because of their blood. On March 19th, posting a story about how a study in China found that people with blood type O were more resistant, and people with type A blood more susceptible to the virus, Maravelias commented: "Well that answers a lot for me. Superior Greek/Sicilian blood line."

On March 30, he posted an internet meme-ish cartoon that showed two Asian-looking men and women with the serpent in the Garden of Eve asking them "Do you want an apple?" The bottom half of the cartoon showed Adam and Eve roasting the serpent to eat, in a reference to the wet markets in Wuhan that some believe is where the pandemic originated. The headline of the cartoon: "If Adam and Eve Had Been Chinese." Maravelias' comment on his Facebook page was: "Here you go come on you know its funny." He deleted the post late this week after POLITICO started asking questions. In a comment about Japanese people getting hit with a second wave of infections, he said, "the most efficient people on earth are getting the second blast. Stay home...."

Asked for comment, Maravelias said: "Approximately 15,000 residents of New Castle county have been infected and you are hassling me about a Facebook post -- unemployment is over 30 percent in Delaware and my personal Facebook reposts are news? No wonder there is no real media presence. ... This is politically motivated by a far left wing faction to drive a wedge with radical political theatrics." (Delaware's official unemployment rate in March was actually 5.1 percent, although it's certainly risen significantly since then, and there are fewer than 1,400 cases in New Castle county.) A spokesperson for the national AFL-CIO did not respond to multiple requests for comment. An email sent to North America's Building Trades Unions was also not answered.

In the Courts

ROBERTS TO WRITE DACA OPINION?: The Supreme Court’s final remaining decision from the November sitting will decide the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and, as law professor Steve Vladeck pointed out on Twitter, Chief Justice John Roberts “is the only Justice who hasn't written at least one majority opinion from that session.”

During oral arguments in the case, Roberts was “sympathetic” to the Trump administration’s plan to wind down the program, but he also “challenged a government lawyer arguing for broad discretion over immigration,” CNN legal analyst Joan Biskupic reported at the time. “In the end, Roberts may not be willing to rule in a way that means past DACA recipients suddenly have benefits revoked and face deportation,” she wrote. “His remarks left open the possibility that this conservative court would defy predictions and rule against the Trump administration.”

ICYMI: WEST VIRGINIA UPHOLDS RIGHT TO WORK LAW: The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia on Tuesday ruled 5-0 to uphold the state’s right to work law, which bars unions from requiring mandatory fees from nonmembers to cover the cost of collective bargaining, The National Law Review reports. The ruling “removes the cloud over the state’s right-to-work law, which was passed in 2016 but was enjoined by a trial court for a substantial period of time,” and represents a major loss for unions who challenged the law in court.

SCOTUS WIDENS GROUNDS FOR DEPORTATION: The Supreme Court on Thursday “widened the grounds for deporting lawful immigrants with criminal records” in its reading of a 1996 law laying out the conditions for deportation, Jess Bravin writes for The Wall Street Journal. “The case turned on whether the term ‘inadmissible,’ as it appears in the statute, can refer to a green-card holder who already lives in the U.S., as the government argued, or only to someone seeking admission to the U.S.” Here’s the opinion.

Safety

NATIONAL COSH RELEASES ANNUAL ‘DIRTY DOZEN’: The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health released a “special coronavirus edition” of its annual Dirty Dozen Thursday, spotlighting 12 employers who they say put workers at risk, often by failing to protect them against the pandemic.

Included in the rundown: the National Restaurant Association, for its campaign against paid sick leave, and Victoria’s Secret, for reports on its history of sexual harassment. The report also called out Chipotle for allegedly not complying with local paid sick leave laws, and Trader Joe’s for not closing its stores despite alleged exposure. Amazon earned a “dishonorable mention” for its “breakneck pace of next-day delivery” and alleged employee exposure to coronavirus.

What We're Reading

— “The post-pandemic workplace will hardly look like the one we left behind,” from The Washington Post

— “SBA warns big companies on seeking small business loans after backlash,” from POLITICO

— “More than 100 food safety inspectors test positive for coronavirus,” from POLITICO

— “Coronavirus Lockdowns Slow Target’s Roll,” from The Wall Street Journal

— “DMV region leaders call on Trump to continue allowing federal employees to telework,” from POLITICO

— “Corrections unions sue New York City for long shifts, lack of Covid-19 testing,” from POLITICO

— “The financial risk to U.S. business owners posed by COVID-19 outbreak varies by demographic group,” from Pew Research Center

— “Johns Hopkins University cuts pay, warns of layoffs amid coronavirus,” from WBAL TV11

— “Union: DOJ deportation appeals workers fear overcrowding,” from POLITICO

— “Young people are being left out of coronavirus economic relief efforts. That could be a big problem.” from The Washington Post

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT!

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey