by Bruce Walker
Like much of the rest of the country, Michigan is witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases and a proportional increase in unemployment as drastic shut-down measures are taken to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Michigan experienced a 64.46% increase in new unemployment claims last week. According to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Labor, there was an increase of 15,843 initial claims filed between the weeks ending Nov. 14 (16,656) and Nov. 21 (32,499).
Michigan’s total unemployment claims for the week ending Nov. 21 was 173,142, slightly less than 1,200 claims below the previous week’s 174,303 claims.
The DOL reported the five states with the largest increases in initial unemployment claims the week ending Nov. 14 were Louisiana (+33,573), Massachusetts (+9,859), Texas (+5,216), Kentucky (+3,770), and Minnesota (+3,608).
The largest decreases measured in the same time period were in Illinois (-20,581), Washington (-8,904), New Jersey (-7,990), Florida (-7,045), and Georgia (-4,201).
The DOL reported the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims nationwide was 778,000, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 748,000.
The 4-week moving average was 748,500, an increase of 5,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 743,500. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the week ending November 14, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the previous week’s unrevised rate.
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Bruce Walker is a regional editor at The Center Square. He previously worked as editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s MichiganScience magazine and The Heartland Institute’s InfoTech & Telecom News.
