hill. he will discuss his agency's response to unrest in portland and equipment of the dhs personnel to protests across the nation. the homeland security committee begins at 10:00 eastern on c-span, online as c-span.org or listen free on the radio app. the: seth harris served in obama administration as acting labor secretary. he's currently visiting professor of public affairs at cornell university. here to talk about the unemployment and the job situation during the pandemic. seth harris, good morning. we had you here a couple days before the july jobs number will be released. what sort of trends are you seeing as states begin to report rising cases and we've seen closures of the economy in some

states across the country. saying goodart by morning to you. the trendlines have not been good. there are two indicators for what's happening with employment. the census bureau is putting out per luminary data that indicate that the percentage of americans who are employed is declining again. and the labor department puts out data about initial weekly unemployment claims. filing foreople their unemployment benefits for the first time. and those numbers have been pretty stagnant since the beginning of june and recently have begun to take up a little bit. which is an indication that there are more people losing their jobs in the economy. those indicators suggest that while we may see some jobs growth, it's going to be a low number at best and that's going to suggest that this recovery is going to take a good long time.

>> in this discussion and our anticipation of the jobs number on friday? that $600 benefit from the federal government. looking beyond the next few weeks, how long do you think additional unemployment whether it be $600 more or less will be needed for americans? >> the answer is we are going to need the benefits as long as extremely high rates of unemployment continue and the unemployment is going to continue as long as the economy is in trouble and that will be true as long as we have the pandemic with us. there is no separation between managing the pandemic and getting the economy to recover. a week benefits which are absolutely critical to millions of families across the united states are going to have to continue until families are

able to get their breadwinners back into the workforce and get the jobs they need in order to get paychecks that will support their families. the economy really is struggling almost entirely because of the pandemic. we were doing reasonably well. with incomele inequality and wealth inequality and racial disparities in our economy. theat the top line level economy was doing reasonably well. we are doingcator, very poorly. maybe the worst economy that we've seen since the great depression. maybe even worse than that. and that's because we are failing to manage this pandemic successfully. we are not bringing down infection rates, we are not bringing down death rates. hospitalizations remain high. front-line workers don't have personal protective equipment. we don't have contact tracing and testing or at least testing

that can be used effectively for contact tracing. we are failing in the public health approach and that is causing us to fail on the economic approach. seth harris is the former acting labor secretary during the obama administration, talking about unemployment during the pandemic and what your job situation is like. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8000 democrats. independents and others. for those of you whose job has been impacted by the pandemic, (202) 748-8003. thehat issue, we spent first hour talking about whether schools should reopen. concurrent with that is having parents available to monitor their kids, that means those parents working from home. how does that complicate the return to work for those who are

actually still employed? complicatedemely for working parents of school-aged kids. we have more than 30 million of those in the united states. having to balance being a caregiver for your child, a teacher's assistant for your child for those who are trying to do remote education while also doing your work, if you can work remotely. not every worker in the united states is able to work remotely, has proven to be frustrating and difficult for a lot of people. millions millions and of workers who have to go to a physical place in order to do their work and there are two challenges. one is the challenge of childcare. system is under immense pressure. they are suffering horribly with respect to funding. we have schools that are closed.

the most ats are risk of being exposed to the covid-19 virus. they are the front-line essential workers who are coming into contact with the public and in a lot of those workplaces we are finding extremely high rates of transmission from grocery stores to meatpacking plants, transit system to frontline first responders. there is grave risk to those workers and what they worry about most is bringing the disease back into their home and exposing their children, partners and spouses, older members of their families. that's really a worry for these workers. protecting those workers has to be part of the larger scheme. we are not going to solve this problem by forcing a bunch of kids back to face-to-face instruction in schools. schools are also workplaces. so they don't just have kids in them.

staff,s, janitorial administrators, cafeteria staff. they also need to be protected. whereby see a system schools successfully protect those workers as well as the kids, i think it's going to be very difficult for school systems to make the decision to bring kids back into the classroom. july the jobs number for comes back on friday. this headline from the techrepublic, the jobless number falling in june from 14.7 to 11.1. what do you think we will see when the jobs number comes out on friday? >> it's really volatile. i think it's hard to predict. i would say the likeliest outcome is that we will see some jobs growth, something below 2 million jobs which would still be a tremendous number of jobs.

i think it's not out of the question that we see flat jobs growth. i think it would be surprising if we lost the 4.8 million jobs that we were able to add in june. those were mostly people returning to work. in some jurisdictions where they have re-closed the economy. i think that it's possible that we've seen a shrinkage of jobs in those jurisdictions but in other jurisdictions, we have seen a lot of people returning to work. i think that will largely even out and lean towards the small amount of jobs growth. we lost more than 21 million jobs in march and april. we recovered about a third of those jobs in may and june. recovering even a couple of million jobs now is not going to be enough to get us on the road to recovery.

we really need a concentrated focused effort on dealing with the pandemic while also dealing with the economy. forcing people back to work and kids into school is the wrong way to go. >> when we hear the jobs created number, does the labor set aside, these are the jobs that are returning jobs. these are absolutely new created jobs. >> the bureau of labor statistics is the premier statistical agency in the world. i don't just say that because i used to oversee them. it's because it's true. they are a terrific organization. they are able to parse out the reasons why people lost their jobs and the reasons why people are going back to work. numbers, we know the 4.8 million jobs created were entirely people returning from temporary furlough to their

former jobs. the big concern that we should have is the number of people on permanent furlough meaning they've lost their job and they are not going back has been increasing. unemployedage of people in that category has been increasing. from alan in hear east chicago, indiana. caller: good. longtime listener, big time fan. thank you for taking my call. i have a question. i'm confused about the number of people who are actually unemployed. i always assumed that anyone who benefits willnt be considered unemployed. all the major cable networks who been tracking people are doing initial unemployment filing each week and it's a total of like 54.6 million i

last heard. but the labor department is saying there's only 20 million for one month are unemployed. so i don't know what happened to the other 34.6 million. i assume these people filed for more than one week. i would just like to know what is the exact number of total people who are unemployed and do they base it on just everyone who's getting unemployment benefits or just people who file for the first time? >> that's a terrific question and good for you for playing close attention to these labor statistics. there are a number of different numbers out there. i will try to clear it up and i don't want to promise i can give you an absolutely crystal clear answer. right now there are 30 million americans who are receiving some kind of unemployment benefits.

that includes traditional employees and because congress expanded the unemployment insurance program, it includes people who were self-employed, people who are independent contractors. they are now getting benefits as well. some number of those people are not completely out of work, they've just lost summer most of their work or they've lost a part-time job. be counted ast unemployed by the bureau of labor statistics in the monthly unemployment numbers. statisticsof labor does two surveys. they talk to people and establishments. that's how they get the different numbers that they have. the unemployment claims numbers tells us who is receiving benefits. what the bureau of labor statistics tells us is people who are out of work, people who have not worked in the preceding week. count, there are at least

20 million, maybe as many as 30 million americans who have lost their jobs or had a significant reduction in work. those who are suffering from this pandemic recession and need those unemployment benefits from congress. my hope is speaker pelosi and later schumer are going to cut a deal with the white house and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell will go along with it and be able to get those unemployment benefits going as long as the other things in the heroes act will spur the economy and get people back to work. up next in thousand oaks, california. caller: i have a simple question. who issomeone personally making more money through the supplemental unemployment insurance, the $600 plus the federal state unemployment, then

he used to get while he had a job. so he's not going back to work. why is it right for someone like me who has to work for a job to earn less than someone who would not be working for a job? thank you. question.a fair and this is a big part of the debate that we are seeing over the next covid-19 recovery bill. there are some people who are both stateeceiving and unemployment benefits meaning the benefits they would get from their state under ordinary circumstances and an additional $600 from the federal government and some percentage of those people are getting more than they would earn in wages. but there was a very important study that was released this week from yale university that shows that that has not had any effect over and overall effect on people returning to work.

basically people would like to go back to work. they prefer to earn their living rather than getting unemployment benefits. the reason we need those official benefits is because there are very few jobs in the economy right now. if you take two different data sets and the labor department, there is one that shows for the end of may there were about 5 million job openings in the united states. there are about 30 million people receiving unemployment benefits. every job in the united states fell by unemployment right now, we still have tens of millions of people without jobs. we want those people to have as much money as they could get around the amount they were earning before. to spend. need them that keeps the economy growing. we don't want them to be evicted from their homes. them to be able to keep the economy going by spending

and keeping their families going. that's the way we are going to survive this pandemic recession. this one from roland says, i haven't missed a day of work since this pandemic. phone isn't ringing. i'm checking phone. it's working, just not ringing. the question, business is very slow now because the $600 is going. that benefit was ended as of last friday. business hasow why slowed down for you. i think it's not out of the question, for most people the benefit ended last week rather than this week. so some number of people who had money to spend before last week don't have it now and that is going to be felt in grocery stores, gas stations, landlord-tenant relationships. other places where unemployed workers spend their money to

keep their families going. it's going to be felt in retail, eating and drinking establishments. ofs billions and billions dollars each week that goes into people's pockets and the evidence from a study we did airing the great recession shows that when an unemployed worker gets a dollar, they immediately turn right around and spend that dollar and that's why that money keeps the economy going. i don't know what exactly is happening in your business, but all across the country there are businesses wondering why they've seen a drop off in their weekly or daily receipts, and the reason is because republicans in the united states senate have refused to go forward with extending the $600 weekly unemployment benefit. host: reference on unemployment rates throughout history from cnbc, the high level during the peak of the depression, unemployment rate in the united states 25.6%.

april's unemployment rate was 14.7% according to the bureau of labor statistics. of you whoor those have lost your job during the pandemic, (202) 748-8003. sarah is on that line in houston. caller: thank you for taking my call. to anlling in regards overlooked situation for substitute teachers. with the school year being pushed back, some teachers aren't going to be able to work even if schools don't open it all. that's going to pose a problem. are opportunities for substitutes to go into a classroom, it's going to be difficult for those in high risk groups to work. so i'm wondering what the situation is going to be for that population. of teachers who substitute.

i'm sorry that you're going through these struggles and i know it's no consolation for you, but there are lots of people around the country experiencing what you are experiencing right now. we have a lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen with schools and i think it's going to end up being at most estate estate decision. in a lot of states it will be a district by district decision. this is an excruciatingly difficult decision for these folks to have to make because honestly we don't know what is required in order to keep kids safe and also how to keep teachers like yourself save in a face-to-face environment. any population of folks who don't socially distant successfully, it's little kids and even teenagers. i think there is cause for concern. the answer to your question is going to depend on the state.

if you had employment and lost it because of covid-19, you should be eligible for unemployment benefits in most states, but it's going to depend on what your state rules are. ais is going to be frustrating answer, i encourage you to reach out to your state unemployment office. mostare swamped now and states with claims and questions like the ones you have. toncourage you to reach out your state unemployment office. everyone who has lost a job or has fear of losing the job should try to figure out what to do in order to support themselves. i don't want to see people tapping their savings if they can avoid it. you want to see people tap into the available government funds to support themselves while this recession continues. host: one of the states struggling with that is california. point one 3 million

unemployed california workers --rt trapped in edd plate payment limbo. in ripley, west virginia. republican line. morning. caller: morning. i hope everyone's having a great day today. why did thestion is unemployed get the $600 a week bonus plus the stimulus direct payment? i call that double dipping. my second question is why can't justeliminate the $600 and to stimulus payment to everyone where it's equal across the board until this pandemic is over thank you. -- is over? thank you. >> the reason they were given of $1200 percheck adult $500 per child was they

needed it very desperately just as many other americans who are still at work need that money. and the goal of that money is not really some kind of reward for people. it's to keep the economy going as much as we possibly can midst of a recession. because the pandemic has spread throughout our communities, people are deeply fearful and government is shutting down large segments of the economy. so commerce has slowed very dramatically. we saw the largest single drop in gross domestic product is the measure of goods and services being sold and bought in our economy. largestrter we saw the single drop in gdp since that measurement has been taken. that is really disturbing. that happened even though people were getting this additional government money. without the government money, our economy would be much worse off than we would suffer

permanent harm. money tow is give the the people who need it most. they will turn right around and spend it, and that will keep stores and businesses and landlords and manufacturers and others going to some extent until we can deal with the pandemic and get the economy growing again. i think that's an important part of an economic strategy. i would say it's not ideal. it's not the way anyone would like to see it run frankly in a situation like this when you have a crisis, you are not going to be able to have a perfect policy. the extra benefits and checks are good policies that are helping us survive in a difficult time. host: the house passed the heroes act back in late june. that would provide $1200 per family, up to $6,000 per household plus a weekly

unemployment benefit extended through january 2021. thesenate has proposed heels act from the u.s. senate. their measure would reduce the unemployment increased to $200 the direct payments part of that proposal, $12 per individual. let's hear from susan in baltimore on the democrat line. it sounds like you are in the car. turn down the volume and go ahead with your comment. in waldorf,areata maryland. good morning. caller: morning. basically prior to the pandemic i always worked two jobs.

mgm was not an option. i did not even receive unemployment benefits until may. my mom at the time was the only one working. so there was no income. mgm, now i'm only working at kohl's and i'm only getting a hundred something dollars a week. and the hours that i was getting have been drastically reduced. so we talk about the benefit and i had people say, they don't let the benefits because the majority african-americans. they receive benefits and don't want to work. i would love to work, but i would like the work that's going to benefit me as well.

dilemmas kind of the that i have and everything i have is backed up online at risk of losing my car and everything else. can you do with 100,000 something dollars a month? >> let me say first i'm terribly sorry. there are millions of struggles just like yours across states right now. let me just say the struggles that states have had in paying these unemployment benefits are not a surprise to those of us who work with the unemployment system. the unemployment system is been under resourced, has not had updated technology or data systems for many years. we knew about this but we were never able to get congress to appropriate the money that was necessary in order to be able to update the systems. every state has its own system. some of them are updated.

the other states have very old systems. they are creaky, they are slow, they are understaffed. they are just not able to deal with these claims. that's why areata or others had to wait months to get there. that's one of the lessons of these experiences. we've got to play -- pay close attention to these systems. everyone is trying to do the right thing. they just don't have the resources to succeed. that she's at risk of losing her car and her family being thrown out in the streets, that's a serious risk for americans all across the united states. this argument that is at the argumenthe republicans for the benefits is people want to sit at home and they don't want to work and we are incentivizing them to sit at home so why would they go back to their jobs. anecdotes that people

don't want to go back to work. as a general matter, people want to go back to work if they can do it safely. they want to get back into a regular viable earnings mode. it's not the fault of unemployed people that they are not able to work. it is the fault of the people who are failing to manage this pandemic properly and failing to get this coronavirus under control and get back to something approaching normal. the idea of punishing unemployed people in hopes that they will go back to a job that doesn't exist anymore is frankly a cruel approach to public policy. host: the heroes act includes $75 billion in homeowner assistance funding and $100 billion in rental assistance.

eli and florida asks this. how does mr. harris see the impact of all the stimulus packages on the national debt? what is the real impact in growing the national debt? at anms we are already impossible number. >> i think that's a legitimate concern to have. national debt has been growing dramatically under president trump but in circumstances like those that are in right now where the private sector has had to reduce its spending, reduce its demand. the only option is for government to step in and spit. rates areinterest close to zero so we are borrowing that money at essentially no cost to the american taxpayer. so that's the right thing to do to keep our economy from really collapsing completely. butad a big downturn

frankly, it could have been significantly worse. any hope of recovery is going to be focused on the government spending money to get us going again. i'm not too worried about the ledger sheet right now, what the deficit looks like or what the debt looks like. it is something we are going to have to deal with over time. but we are not going to be able to reduce the date by flashing spending and collapsing the economy. we need to get the american economy to be the growth engine of the world economy again. host: on the independent line next bob. caller: i think you are at best disingenuous when he responded to the gentleman that pointed out that some people are getting with theng unemployed

$600 supplement than people are working. the fact of the matter is that last week c-span had someone on our receiving greater benefits -- than they are when they were working. 2/3. and there was a texas congressman came on who indicated that 75% of the p's receiving -- 75% receiving more than. wanty that the republicans to give people money, they're just saying it's too much. the firstsaid it when cares act was passed.

i can tell you as a financial professional, let me get the people a quick example. there's a client of mine who goes to these tradeshows to make arts and crafts. those things have been shut down. at best over the years maybe she needed $500 from her business. the $600 plusg -- $500 is thel best she ever earned and that's what she's receiving. another situation where young kids left college and wanted to take a year off and he started bussing tables and living at home making about $200 a week. he's never seen for almost $900 those are not working the facts and there's a lot of that going on. that was onal

c-span last week, i'm a financial professional. it is big number whether 66%, 70%, 60%, it's a big number. from sethill hear harris. >> i don't particularly like being accused of being disingenuous. i agree with you. there are people getting more money from employment insurance than they were earning before they lost their jobs. the question is what effect is that have. where is the evidence of what effect that has simply stating that fact does not tell us what the consequence of that fact is. the truth of the matter is there is no evidence that the fact that people are getting additional money is keeping people from going back to work. states, if yout are offered your old job back under the unemployment insurance system and you say new, you lose

your eligibility for unemployment insurance. so these benefits that people are getting supporting them at maybe a little bit more than they were earning before. that's what's allowing them to pay their mortgage, pay their rent, pay their bills. not end up in thrown out in the street. but if they are offered their old job back, they have to go and take that job and there's no evidence that anything else is happening in the economy so this idea that somehow people are on the gravy train because they are frankly, that's what's disingenuous. that's the argument that's disingenuous. sam inomment from wildwood, georgia. i don't understand why people keep complaining about others having a few extra dollars from unemployment and. if you want to get the economy going, that's how it goes. for some it is the first time in their lives where they actually had a little money. why keep them down?

are we not all in this together? jonathan in goldsboro, north carolina. caller: i'm a truck driver. i'm running roughly $1000 a week and i know there's jobs out there because i've had to look to get this one just recently. and i've seen people making $600 a week staying home. i'm a little sore about it because i do want to get out there and work. i went through the last economic depression we had in the early to thousands where i got laid off and had to join the military. i understand there's work out there and i understand their people that do want to work. there are also jobs. they may not be the jobs you want, but i do know there are jobs out there. i have a problem spending my tax dollars with people that are making more now on this unemployment benefit than they were making before.

i have a problem with it. i don't feel like it should be out here slaving to earn $300 more on average than someone .itting at home host: all right jonathan. >> i'm really glad that you were able to get that job congratulations. that's a good solid income in our economy. numbers, the national and the truth of the matter is that there six people collecting unemployment benefits for every open job in our economy. so as i said before, even if isry single person who unemployed and can find a job and felt that job, you would still have more than 20 million people who didn't have a job. not everybody can do every job. in order to do the job jonathan has, you have to have a

commercial drivers license. not everybody has that. some jobs may be in silicon valley. you have to get the skills training in order to do that. it doesn't happen instantly. some jobs may not be in the locale where people are located. are people going to move across the country in order to get a job. some will, some won't. i want to focus on this very important point. i worked with the company which is a mass online focus group company and we did a focus group a month and a half ago with work or asking them their attitudes about turning to work. and what we found from that mass online focus group of 300 workers is that there is deep and pervasive fear among lots of people of this covid-19 crisis. they really worry about getting sick or making members of their family or extended service sick. and getting people back to work

particularly in jobs where they are going to have to be face-to-face with customers is going to be extremely difficult unless we see evidence that employers are taking seriously the need to protect their workers from the virus. and in lots and lots of workplaces we are seeing evidence of the opposite. but employers are not being careful enough. we see retail establishments that allow customers to come in with no mask. we see packing houses where the workers have not been protected, thousands have gotten sick and others have died. we see transit works -- workers getting sick and some of them dying. workers are very worried about back to work in this environment. there are real racial disparities here. 43% of white workers felt it was safe to go back but only 21% of

workers and 18% of african-american workers felt it was safe to go back to work. that's an understandable response by black and latin workers to the experience those communities have had over the last several months. because they have much more likely to get infected and dying. i think the fear factor is incredibly important i think it's the leading economic the united states. folks don't want to catch this coronavirus. dolores.'s go to caller: my name is dolores. i'm 61 years old. i've been working since i was 15 doingold at a hotel coffee and lounge. i work around many people traveling all over the world.

so hotel employers stopped working since march 15. is $239.come coming in the $600 they were giving us was a big help to workers that work at hotels. host: are you still working your full schedule that you were before? caller: no. i'm not working at all. no employees are working at the hotel right now because they shut us down since march 15. $600 was doing us real good. host: appreciate your experience. any comment? >> you happened to working with the industries that was the most hard-hit by this pandemic.

all those industries where there face-to-face interaction with, hospitality, eating and drinking establishments, travel. retail. those industries got hit so hard right at the beginning and that disadvantage a lot of women like dolores, those industries tend to have a disproportionately large percentage of women in their as well as workers of color. there are folks who are being disproportionately affected why this pandemic recession and the idea that we should take money out of their pockets because we think they may be getting a little extra money out of the system is unfair and isn't in the right way to go. if we are worried about people getting too much money, really gaming and cheating the system, let's take a closer look at some of the folks got money in these business loan programs. businesses that easily could

have gotten any from public debt markets but instead borrowed money at no cost or low cost from the federal government and millions of dollars. that's really where we should be focusing our outrage and the attention of the public, lobbying our senators and congresspeople to do oversight to make sure the people who get the business loans in the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars that those people are the people who need it most, who are keeping their workers on the payroll, helping their communities thrive, surviving this pandemic recession, and not folks who are just cronies of the current administration in washington and helping line their pockets. that's what we really need to be outraged about and focused on. host: seth harris is a visiting professor at cornell on

♪ announcer: c-span's washington journal," and coming up this morning, we will discuss the 75th anniversary of the bombings japan,shima and nagasaki with the author of "twilight of pacific, 19 44e to 1945, and put in joining us is the grandson of former president harry truman. watch c-span's "washington journal," live at 7:00 a.m. this morning, and be sure to join us with your text messages and's. -- and tweets. is a look at our live coverage thursday. at 10:00 a.m., chad wolf is on capitol hill to testify on the

use of federal law enforcement in response to recent protests in portland and elsewhere. that is followed at 2:00 p.m. eastern buy a house subcommittee hearing on the coronavirus crisis, examining the potential impact of reopening schools during the pandemic. the senate is back at 9:30 a.m. eastern to debate and vote on the nomination of john cronan to be a judge for the southern district of new york. and on c-span3, the senate armed services committee holds the confirmation hearing for several defense department nominees, including inspector general. that that's underway at 9:00 a.m. eastern. announcer: house speaker nancy pelosi incint