Flattening
July saw the recovery stall out in many ways. The unemployment insurance numbers tell the weekly story:
Like everything else, the normally highly reliable UI tables have gone all wonky on us. The difficulty states are having with their ancient IT systems has been well-documented. But additionally, the substantial Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is counted in the "All Programs" table, not with the normal UI. Many recipients are overlapping, but there is no way to shake that out. Right now, there are almost 11 million PUA recipients, and 1.5 million recipients of other smaller