July jobless rate, payrolls rise as Pennsylvania seeks aid

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s unemployment rose in July to remain well above the national rate, even as payrolls rebounded for another month from pandemic-driven shutdowns, the state reported Friday.

Meanwhile, Gov. Tom Wolf's office also reported that the state was applying Friday to the federal government for a new round of $300 in weekly unemployment benefits under a presidential order tapping into disaster relief aid. Wolf's labor secretary said earlier this week that it would.

Still, Wolf, a Democrat, urged Republicans in Congress to instead extend the $600-a-week unemployment supplement that expired last month.

“As I have said before and will continue to say, the extra $600 per week was the lifeline Pennsylvania families needed to get by,” Wolf said in a statement. "They deserve better.”

Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate was 13.7% in July, up a half-percentage point from June's adjusted rate, the state Department of Labor and Industry said.

It had initially estimated June's rate at 13%. The state’s rate pandemic-driven unemployment high exceeded 16% in April, the highest rate in more than four decades of record-keeping.

The national rate was 10.2% in July.

In a survey of households, the labor force grew by 88,000 to rise back above 6.4 million and regain some of what it lost since hitting a record high in February at close to 6.6 million.

Payrolls had another big rebound in July, gaining back another 98,000 of the more than 1.1 million lost during the pandemic as Pennsylvania battled a resurgence of the virus in July after Wolf eased social distancing restrictions that allowed businesses to reopen.

At the height of coronavirus-shutdown job losses, seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls fell to the lowest level in at least three decades of...