Unemployment Claims Increase for the Week Ending July 25

For the week ending July 25, Massachusetts had 19,179 individuals file an initial claim for regular Unemployment Insurance (UI), an increase of 1,025 over the previous week.

Increases were widespread throughout all sectors. From March 15 to July 25, a total of 1,144,983 workers have filed an initial claim for regular UI.  For the sixth week in a row, continued UI claims at 502,471 were down 8,235 or 1.61 percent over the previous week. 

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims filed for the week ending July 25, at 14,850, were 2,448 more than the previous week. Since April 20, some 691,298 claimants have filed an initial claim for the PUA.    

The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which provided up to 13 weeks of extended benefits, was implemented on May 21.  For the week July 18 to July 25, some 4,155 PEUC initial claims were filed, 612 lower than the previous week, bringing the total of PEUC filings to 79,278 since implementation.

Since March, the customer service staff at the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) has grown from around 50 employees to over 2000. The remote customer service operation is now making over 35,000 individual contacts per day and DUA continues to host unemployment town halls – which have been held in English, Spanish, and Portuguese – and have been attended by around 400,000 constituents.