Weekly Unemployment Claimant data Still Falling, Some Industries See Increase in Claims

Massachusetts had 26,619 individuals file an initial claim for regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) from June 28 to July 4, a decrease of 2,453 over the previous week, the fourth consecutive week of decline. However, over-the-week increases in filings were seen in some sectors including Health and Social Assistance, Management of Companies and Construction. From March 15 to July 4, a total of 1,084,115 have filed an initial claim for regular UI.  For the third week in a row, continued UI claims at 535,201 were down 13,240 or 2.4 percent over the previous week.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims filed for the week ending July 4, at 12,969, were 1,185 less than the previous week. Since April 20, 651,214 claimants have filed an initial claim for PUA.       

The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which provided up to 13 weeks of extended benefits, was implemented on May 21. For the week ending July 4, 6,523 PEUC initial claims were filed bringing the total of PEUC filings to 65,667 since implementation.

Since March, the customer service staff at the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) has grown from around 50 employees to over 2000. The remote customer service operation is now making over 35,000 individual contacts per day and DUA continues to host unemployment town halls – which have been held in English, Spanish, and Portuguese – and have been attended by around 400,000 constituents.

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