Joe Biden’s figures on the number of people receiving unemployment benefits compared with two years ago check out. But coronavirus pandemic programs skew his comparison.
For unclear reasons, data from these programs isn’t included in the standard unemployment claims data. According to the White House spreadsheet, these two programs pushed the total number of unemployment benefit recipients up to about 18 million in January 2021, as Biden had tweeted. Since both programs have lapsed, the December 2022 figures do not have to be adjusted upward to account for them.
Burtless offered a few caveats. He said that some gig workers — people who work as freelancers or contractors — may have qualified for payments for working fewer hours than normal, rather than being entirely unemployed. People in this category would not have met the official definition of being"unemployed," which is how Biden’s tweet characterized them.
Finally, Burtless noted that wider unemployment insurance options were available in January 2021 than in December 2022, given that the pandemic programs have phased out. Therefore, he said, a direct comparison like the one Biden made in his tweet is an apples-and-oranges contrast. The 18 million figure accurately represents the combination of traditional unemployment insurance recipients and those who benefited from temporary programs during the coronavirus pandemic. And Biden’s 1.6 million figure for unemployment claims today is accurate.
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