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Another 80,000 Massachusetts residents filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, showing that the state’s deepening recession is still nowhere near its bottom.
Figures released Thursday morning by the federal Labor Department show that 80,345 people in Massachusetts filed for unemployment benefits between April 12 and April 18. That’s down 23,468 claimants from the previous week’s total, but still a sign that the state’s companies are continuing to shed jobs amid the coronavirus-caused economic downturn. The figures do not yet include first-time filers who work as independent contractors, gig workers or who are self-employed, as the state’s new, parallel system for processing those claims was not stood up until earlier this week.
While the state said last week over 571,000 claims for unemployment benefits had been received as of April 11, the latest federal figures only show 463,974 people receiving unemployment benefits during the week of April 12-18. This means some of those 571,304 initial claims may have been from gig workers and others who had not been able to access benefits.
By any measure, Massachusetts has now far exceeded its Great Recession record unemployment rate of 8.8 percent, set in December 2009 and January 2010. As typically calculated by the number of people receiving unemployment benefits – defined as people claiming unemployment for at least two weeks in a row – the state’s jobless rate was 12.4 percent last week. If all of last week’s claimants receive benefits, 14.5 percent of the state will be officially out of work; if all 651,649 unemployment claims filed in Massachusetts since the coronavirus hit were granted, the state’s official unemployment rate would be 17.4 percent.
Nationally, roughly 26 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the five weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors. About 1 in 6 American workers have now lost their jobs since mid-March, by far the worst string of layoffs on record. Economists have forecast that the national unemployment rate for April could go as high as 20 percent, while economists suggest Massachusetts’ jobless rate could go as high as 25 percent.
