Milwaukee County Unemployment at 9.9 Percent

The unemployment rate in July was 9.9 percent in Milwaukee County and 11.1 percent in the City of Milwaukee.

These numbers are the preliminary unemployment figures released by the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) and are based upon the latest jobs report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

These recent unemployment numbers show both the city and the county as a whole have seen employment improve. In June, the unemployment rate for the county was 11.5 percent, and 12.8 percent in the city.

The Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metropolitan statistical area added 1,100 jobs in July. But still lost 67,000 jobs when compared to July 2019.

The county had the fifth highest unemployment rate of all 72 counties in the state. The city had the highest unemployment rate of the state’s 33 largest cities.

The number of new unemployment claims that come in on a weekly basis continue to go down, however, they do so very slowly. Last week, there were 1,006,000 new claims in the U.S., according to the Department of Labor, and 13,227 in Wisconsin during the seven days since the last time Urban Milwaukee reported unemployment figures, according to numbers from DWD.

More than 600,000 people applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) last week.

Three weeks ago the number of new claims dipped below 1 million for the first time since the pandemic began, but it’s been back above one million for the past two weeks.

The country has never seen unemployment claims of this magnitude. For approximately five straight months, there have been more than 1 million new unemployment claims a week. As noted, one week traditional claims were below 1 million, but when added to claims for PUA, claims were over 1 million. Before the pandemic, the highest recorded number of unemployment claims in a single week was 695,000 in 1982.

As of Aug. 8, there are more than 27 million people across the country relying on some sort of unemployment benefit, according to the Department of Labor.