Washington state leads nation in new jobless claims — a seasonal fluke or ‘a red flag’?
Nov. 12, 2020 at 1:03 pm Updated Nov. 13, 2020 at 9:18 am
while that may be just a seasonal fluke, economists say the state could be headed for another wave of pandemic-related job losses.
“
I suspect we are seeing the beginnings of a second major wave of layoffs to rival what we saw in March and April, and driven by a spike in COVID cases that looks much worse than what we saw then,” said Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. ...
But claims also rose sharply in other, nonseasonal sectors, such as manufacturing. Although ESD can’t disclose claims data for specific employers, if some of
last week’s 2,147 manufacturing claims “correspond to”
recent layoff notices filed by Boeing with ESD, “then former Boeing employees are likely among the newly unemployed,” Vance-Sherman said.
The latest jobless claims also showed
spikes in health care and social assistance and government, sectors that saw roughly a doubling in new claims, while claims in the wholesale trade sector jumped 132%.
But even white-collar sectors that have largely avoided big cuts during the pandemic saw large increases in jobless claims.
Claims in the information sector, which includes tech firms, jumped 151.7% while claims in finance and insurance jumped 223.6%.
The
increases go “well beyond the expected seasonal culprits,” said Vigdor, the UW economist...
