The nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., had the biggest percentage of its labor force collecting unemployment benefits at the end of 2020. Also near the top of the list: Hawaii, New York, Nevada and California.
The percentage of workers in those four states and the District of Columbia that were receiving state or federal compensation all topped 10% as of last December, based on the latest data available.
Washington, D.C. was tops at 12.5%, MarketWatch found. Hawaii was not far behind at 12.2%.
South Dakota, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho and Alabama had the smallest share of the labor force getting unemployment benefits. It was less than 2% in all five states.
Read: Manufacturers grow at fastest pace since pandemic, ISM finds
Why such large discrepancies?
Nevada and Hawaii rely heavily on travel and tourism and their service-oriented economies have been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Finding a job is so hard that many people have exhausted state-paid benefits.
The result: More people are getting paid by the federal government in Nevada and Hawaii than the traditional state-run program.
Read: U.S. unemployment claims rise slightly to 745,000 after Texas power outages
New York and California, for their part, instituted some of the toughest business lockdowns during the pandemic, putting tens of thousands of people out of work. So did states such as Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
Most of the states with a low percentage of people on unemployment benefits are rural ones with small and spread-out populations or those like Florida that did not adopt tough business restrictions.
Others such as Alabama offer less generous benefits or have tighter eligibility standards.
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The data collected by MarketWatch has some shortfalls.
For one thing, the number of people getting benefits and the size of the labor force are drawn from different government reports. As such, the percentage of people getting benefits is not the same as the unemployment rate.
What’s more, some states have reported a big decline in the size of their labor force during the pandemic and that could exaggerate the data.
Fraud and double counting have also rendered the data on unemployment benefits less reliable.
See: A visual look at how an unfair pandemic has reshaped work and home
Take California. The Labor Department’s monthly survey of employment estimated there were 1.7 million jobless workers in December in the Golden State. Yet the claims report indicates some 2.16 million people were getting state or federal benefits.
Part of the gap likely reflects fraudulent claims. The 2.16 million figure might also be inflated by some people in the program being counted twice or more.
A couple of states, Florida and Georgia, did not submit the number of people getting federal benefits. Both also have a small share of their labor force getting benefits, but not as small as the MarkeWatch graphic indicates.
Although the federal government is paying out the money, the states themselves administer the benefits and are responsible for collecting the data and submitting to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The federal government is kicking in up to $300 a week in extra benefits for jobless workers who’ve run out of state-funded compensation.
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The highest percentage of workers getting unemployment benefits are in these five states - MarketWatch
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