Unemployment claims for self-employed workers have dropped dramatically. Or did they do?

Self-employed and labor workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, at half the level of the previous week, according to data from the Department of Labor released on Thursday.

This suggests a strong recovery, rising from persistently high – even rising – levels in recent weeks.

But that recovery probably didn’t happen. This only happened on paper, experts say.

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Initial applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance – a temporary federal program that pays benefits for work and other workers ineligible for state aid – dropped to about 161,000 last week. In the previous week, some 310,000 workers signed up for PUA benefits.

Economists and unemployment experts offered some explanations for the reason for the fall.

The sharp drop is likely related to the timing of a recent $ 900 billion Covid aid package, administrative failures between states and worker behavior, they said.

This also occurs in a scenario of stubbornly high claims for benefits in other unemployment programs. Overall, more than 1 million Americans asked for help last week.

“The 50% drop in initial complaints is nothing like that,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy consultant at Employ America, a progressive group, on Twitter.

The law of relief extends the PUA program for 11 weeks until mid-March. It was scheduled to expire the day after Christmas. President Donald Trump signed the legislation in late December, after a delay of almost a week, but that signature probably did not occur in time for many workers to avoid at least a short lapse in benefits.

“There was a lot of uncertainty about whether the AUC would be extended, which could have impacted the complainant’s behavior,” AnnElizabeth Konkel, workplace economist. said.

Experts generally agree that the data is a blip and that states will change the data in next week’s count, which would almost certainly increase the count.

Many states – Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wyoming – did not report any initial claims data for the PUA program during the week ending January 2. However, they reported a combined total of more than 100,000 in the previous week, according to the Department of Labor.

Other states like Illinois, Kentucky and Louisiana reported a total of just 75 complaints – tens of thousands less than at the end of December.