New Unemployment Claims Rising

On March 19th, the downtown Milwaukee Punch Bowl Social laid off 91 employees. Photo by Jennifer Rick.

The number of new unemployment claims in the United States has gone up for the second week in a row.

The number of new claims that came in last week is up by more than 10,000 from the previous week, which was higher than the week before by more than 100,000 claims.

The number of new claims filed had been slowly dropping since the early weeks of the pandemic. But during the past six weeks, new claims coming in each week have held steady between 1.3 and 1.5 million new claims a week. This past week, the country had 1.43 million new claims for unemployment insurance.

Last week, the country saw more than 829,000 claims for Pandemic Unemployment Insurance, which expands unemployment insurance to individuals that would have otherwise not qualified.

In Wisconsin, claims also continue to come in at historic levels, vastly outpacing the number of claims coming in at this time last year. In the seven days since the last time Urban Milwaukee reported on unemployment claims, the state has seen more than 19,000 new claims for unemployment.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate, controlled by Republicans, failed to reach an agreement with their Democratic counterparts on extended unemployment benefits. The $600 a week unemployment boost will expire Friday.

And on top of that, the U.S. saw the fastest drop in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in its entire history during the second quarter of this year, which ran from the beginning of April, until the end of June.