Because of the pandemic, the United States has enacted the most generous welfare state in our ungenerous history. Though limited in scope and time, the supplemental unemployment insurance benefits in the stimulus bill have seriously cushioned the blow of mass unemployment — which is why lots of employers and Republican politicians want the program to expire forever at the end of the month rather than see it renewed. Letting it lapse would be massively destructive.

Some mainstream pundits have gotten excited about signs of recovery over the last few months. Yes, the unemployment rate fell from its April high of 14.7 percent to 11.1 percent in June, but, April and May aside, that’s still higher than any month since May 1941. The broader “U-6” unemployment rate, which includes people who want full-time work but can only find part-time work and those who’ve given up the job search as hopeless, was 18 percent, also off from April’s high, but it was higher than at any point during the 2009 recession (see graph below). The modest recovery from the depths of April were largely the result of states reopening and workers being called back — but that’s driven the disease numbers back up, so these gains don’t look sustainable.