Since the pandemic of coronavirus in the United States around mid-March and millions began to lose their jobs We have heard how many of them have struggled for hours, days and weeks to get to claim unemployment benefits. Governors have acknowledged that their state offices are overwhelmed with the avalanche of applications, as neither their websites nor their staff were prepared for the unprecedented number of people who have asked for financial aid.
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We have also seen pictures of the long lines in front of the offices and received questions from readers about what to do. But without having a quantifiable idea of the probable number of people who have not been able to take advantage of the aid, increased by $ 600 a week in a law approved by Congress to circumvent the economic scourge of the pandemic.
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A survey revealed this Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute helps shed light on it: for every 10 people who were able to apply for the grant there is three or four who tried unsuccessfully and others two who didn’t even try because they found it difficult to do so.
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“These findings assume that official count of jobless claims is likely to drastically underestimate the extent of the decline in jobs and the need for economic relief during the coronavirus crisis, “said Ben Zipperer and Elise Gould, the authors of the study spanning the period from March 22 to April 18.
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The survey states that between 7.8 million and 12.2 million people would have requested the aid unemployment if the process had been easier.
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The official figure may be much worse
Add that amount to the almost 26 million people that according to official data from the Department of Labor, they have applied for subiside in the past five weeks, significantly increased an unthinkable figure just two months ago, when the unemployment rate was at a historically low percentage.
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Adding that number to the official data means that, going forward, economic recovery from the United States could take longer than anticipated and that the ‘destruction’ of jobs is much deeper than previously known. The crisis has been so abrupt that in just five weeks all the jobs created in a decade since the Great Recession of 2008 were erased.
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The findings, according to the report’s authors, should serve to improve the process of applying for unemployment benefits. “At a minimum, states should presume that everyone is eligible and immediately pay benefits, only by verifying their eligibility and reviewing requests after the unprecedented wave of applications slows,” recommended economists at EPI, a policy-aligned institute. from left.
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“If states improve the processing of jobless claims, some of these applicants could eventually ask for it and have their applications accepted,” they added.
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