Press Release Massachusetts Weekly Unemployment Claimant Data 01-14-21

MASSACHUSETTS — Massachusetts Weekly Unemployment Claimant Data

For week ending January 9, 2021, Massachusetts had 31,093 individuals file an initial claim for regular Unemployment Insurance (UI), an increase of 5,233 over the previous week. Due to seasonal trends and new establishment guidelines due to a surge in Covid-19 positive test results, increases in initial claim filings were widespread among all sectors.  The largest increases in initial claim filings were seen in the information not available sector (either lacking industry or employer information), up 2,047; professional and technical services, 644 more and health and social assistance, plus 572. Since March 15, a total of 1,806,347 initial claims for regular UI have been filed.  Continued weeks claimed for the week ending January 9 at 164,827 were up by 6,982, or 4.4 percent more than the previous week, reflecting expected seasonal increases. 

There was a slight decrease in filings to the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. Initial claims filed for week ending January 9, at 4,670 were just 54 claims more than the previous week.  A total of 913,358 claimants have filed an initial claim for the PUA since April 20, 2020.  PUA continued weeks claimed fell significantly to 257,491, the lowest level since the first week of the program.

The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which provided up to 13 weeks of extended benefits, was implemented on May 21.  PEUC initial claims filed at 10,130 is an increase of 4,305 over the previous week. Since implementation, PEUC filings now total 375,109.

The federal/state Extended Benefits (EB) program, which triggered on May 3 due to the high volume of claims, for the week ending January 9 had 28,372 initial claims filed. Since the week of September 6, the first week EB claims were filed, initial claims filings continued to increase as claimants exhausts their PEUC claims and move on to the EB program.

                  Initial Claims Filed

Initial claims by industry

Continued weeks claimed by industry

Industry share of CWC in most recent week

Demographic Breakdowns

Below we present demographic statistics on ethnicity, gender, and race for all those claimants who filed for a continued week in the period prior to the above information. This is to say that because of the timing of data availability, the below statistics reflect continued weeks claimed in the week ending January 2^nd rather than the week ending January 9^th.

Regular UI Demographic Series

Here we present the breakdown by gender, ethnicity, and race of continued claims for Regular UI between March 8^th and January 2^nd, 2021:

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