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Comment by naebother | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of this is just people no longer able to claim unemployment. Maybe things are different with the current downturn, but I don't remember states extending unemployment benefits for the 08 crash. Also wonder what the quality of the job is compared to before being unemployed.

> Workers in most states are eligible for up to 26 weeks of benefits from the regular state-funded unemployment compensation program, although seven states provide fewer weeks and one provides more.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/how-many-weeks-of-unem...

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> Maybe things are different with the current downturn, but I don't remember states extending unemployment benefits for the 08 crash.

Your memory is faulty, then. States extended to 99 weeks during the 08-09 recession.

Likely none since it comes from the Current Population Survey (Household Survey).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Population_Survey#Empl...

There are issues with furlough, though, especially back in April.

>I wonder how much of this is just people no longer able to claim unemployment.

Can you elaborate on this? If people are unable to claim unemployment, shouldn't that incentivize them to get a job, causing the figure to go down?

In my state I had to provide a log of my attempts to get employed, so Unemployment Benefits never disincentivized me in the first place.

After my benefit ran out, more opportunities didn't magically appear. I was still just as incentivized and still just as jobless.

It would incentivize them to get jobs, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean that they’d be able to. They might even become less likely to find work as they’re less able to meet their basic needs.

I thought these numbers were unemployment claims, but looking into it a bit more seems like this is a survey. I was confused by if you can only claim unemployment for on average 26 weeks, then the number of people unemployed for 27 weeks or over would not include those people. But a survey would probably account for these people.

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