by Bruce Walker
More than 28,500 Michigan workers joined the ranks of the unemployed in the week ending June 6, bringing the total number of state residents filing unemployment claims to 870,772 since restrictions were put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Michigan unemployment claims are among the highest in the nation.
Michigan’s unemployment rate the week ending May 23 was 21.7 percent, the third highest in the nation behind Maine (26.9 percent) and Nevada (24.3 percent). The rate is slightly lower than the state’s 23.8 percent unemployment reported at the end of April, which, at the time, was the second highest percentage of unemployment in the nation.
Nationally, new unemployment claims decreased 355,000 last week from the previous week’s revised level of 1,897,000 to 1,542,000, the tenth week in a row the rate of new claims fell from the previous week’s numbers.
More than 43 million U.S. workers have filed unemployment claims since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. Millions of those have since gone back to work as states ease restrictions on businesses deemed non-essential.
Florida tops the list of states with the biggest decrease in week-over-week unemployment, a drop of 97,186. Next on the list is Texas and Georgia, which, respectively, witnessed decreases of 16,941 claims and 14,452 claims.
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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.
