U.S. weekly jobless claims stay elevated; labor market improvement stalling

[progree]

5. Full report. Total claiming benefits in W.E. June 20: 32.9 M, an INCREASE of 1.4 M from previous

week's report. And way higher than the 17.8 million unemployed in the BLS jobs jobs jobs report that came out on 7/2/20 https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142528426

According to https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf   (this is the full report I'm referring to in my title line)

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending June 20 was 32,922,335, an increase of 1,410,788 from the previous week. There were 1,612,122 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

Note how much higher that figure is than the 17.8 million unemployed in the BLS jobs report that came out on 7/2/20 (the survey week for that was June 7 - June 13).

Even if if the corrected unemployment rate is 12.1% instead of 11.1% (see Covid section in OP in https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142528426 ), then the corrected unemployed would be 17.8 * 12.1/11.1 = 19.4 Million.

Anyway, that there is such a large gap between the two numbers: 32.9 million vs. 19.4 million (a 13.5 million difference) has never been explained that I am aware of.

Wolf Richter thinks it is proof the BLS is cooking the books. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I haven't seen any explanation of why this large difference, but I haven't dug into it yet (and probably won't for some time and probably wouldn't get anywhere with it even if I did). MORE: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142528426#post16