May 14, 2020
More than 22% of the Mass. workforce has filed for unemployment
Photo | Grant Welker
The Parkway restaurant and bar in Worcester has temporarily closed.
By Grant Welker
More than 44,000 more Massachusetts residents filed new unemployment claims last week, pushing total claims so far in the state during the coronavirus pandemic past 800,000.
In eight weeks since pandemic-related business closures began, 822,531 Massachusetts residents have filed for unemployment, with new data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor through the week ending May 9.
Nationally, seasonally-adjusted claims last week were just under 3 million, a decrease of 195,000, or about 5%, from the previous week's revised level. So far, nearly 37 million workers nationally have filed claims since the week ending March 21.
The latest Massachusetts data does have some good news: It's the lowest weekly unemployment number in the past eight weeks, but it was a more than tenfold rise since the same week a year ago, when the economy was still strong.
In the week ending May 2, claims in Massachusetts were highest in retail (7,060), health and social assistance (7,943), and food and accommodation (6,051), according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Data for the week ending May 9 wasn't available Thursday morning.
The 822,531 who've filed for unemployment in the last eight weeks accounts for 22.2% of the state's 3.7-million-person workforce as of March.
The state's record high monthly unemployment figure was 10.3% in March 1976, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monthly unemployment figures for April are due to be released May 22.
The national unemployment rate for April was 14.7%, the highest since during the Great Depression.
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