More than 1 million people in Michigan have filed for unemployment benefits after nearly 220,000 people asked for government assistance this past week, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday.
For the week ending April 11, nearly 220,000 Michigan residents filed for unemployment insurance benefits. It follows the more than 380,000 who filed the week before and drives the total of Michigan residents filing for unemployment insurance benefits over 1 million.
Nationally, more than 5.2 million people filed for unemployment in the week ending on April 11, down from the 6.6 million that filed the week before. There are more than 22 million people across the nation that have filed for unemployment since the pandemic began shutting down the economy roughly a month ago.
“Today’s report reflects the continuing impact of the important public health measures being taken to defeat the coronavirus. Americans are making sacrifices for the wellbeing of the country, and the Trump Administration is moving quickly to support workers and small businesses during this difficult time,” said Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia in a statement. “The Department of Labor has issued all the essential guidance the States need to implement the historic unemployment benefits expansion under the CARES Act, and 29 States are now paying the $600 weekly boost in unemployment benefits under the Act.”
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 8.2 percent for the week ending April 4, the Department of Labor said. That number is up 3.1 percentage points from the previous week’s unrevised rate and outpaces history’s previous high, 7 percent in May of 1975.
Thursday’s numbers also pass up unemployment numbers during the Great Recession, where the highest active claim total was a little more than 363,000 in early 2009.
The United States currently has more than 632,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll is more than 31,000.
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Jordyn Pair is a reporter with The Michigan Star. Follow her on Twitter at @JordynPair. Email her at [email protected].
Photo “Long Lines” by Gabriel White. CC BY-SA 2.0.
