Massachusetts Weekly Unemployment Claimant Data 12-10-20

For immediate release:

12/10/2020

Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development

Charles Pearce, Director of Communications - Exec. Office of Labor and Workforce Development

Phone

(617) 626-7121

Online

charles.pearce@mass.gov

MASSACHUSETTS — Massachusetts Weekly Unemployment Claimant Data

For the week ending December 5, 2020, Massachusetts had 25,831 individuals file an initial claim for regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) an increase of 2,100 over the previous week. Increases were widespread among all sectors. The largest increases in initial claim filings for the week were seen in food and accommodation, 614 higher; administrative and waste services, up 449; information not available sector (either lacking industry or employer information), 351 more; and retail trade, plus 271. Since March 15, a total of 1,681,088 initial claims for regular UI have been filed. Continued weeks claimed for the week ending December 5 at 170,642 were down 4,661 or 2.7 percent less over the previous week. Continued weeks claimed has not shown an increase since the week of June 7 to 13.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims filed from November 29 to December 5, at 7,987 were 715 claims more than the previous week. PUA initial claims filings have been decreasing in the previous five weeks. A total of 888,043 claimants have filed an initial claim for the PUA since April 20, 2020.

The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), which provided up to 13 weeks of extended benefits, was implemented on May 21. For the tenth consecutive week, PEUC initial claims filed decreased over the previous week. For the week ending December 5 at 8,662 were 1,120 less. Since implementation, PEUC filings now total 334,976.

The federal/state Extended Benefits (EB) program, which triggered on May 3 due to the high volume of claims, for the week ending December 5 had 3,138 claims filed, just 7 claims more than the previous week. Since the week of September 6, the first week EB claims were filed, a total of 28,092 individuals filed an EB initial claim.

Initial Claims Filed

Industry	Week Ending 11/28	Week Ending 12/05	Change	% Change
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting	102	164	62	60.8%
Mining	21	19	-2	-9.5%
Utilities	72	62	-10	-13.9%
Construction	2,054	2,264	210	10.2%
Manufacturing	1,196	1,244	48	4.0%
Wholesale Trade	657	693	36	5.5%
Retail Trade	1,602	1,873	271	16.9%
Transportation & Warehouse	906	858	-48	-5.3%
Information	418	328	-90	-21.5%
Finance & Insurance	931	770	-161	-17.3%
Real Estate	273	337	64	23.4%
Professional and Technical Services	1,936	1,835	-101	-5.2%
Management of Companies	185	203	18	9.7%
Administrative & Waste Services	1,399	1,848	449	32.1%
Education	976	967	-9	-0.9%
Health & Social Assistance	2,344	2,418	74	3.2%
Arts, Entertainment & Recreation	453	644	191	42.2%
Food & Accommodation	2,187	2,801	614	28.1%
Other Services	1,220	1,368	148	12.1%
Public Administration	1,188	1,173	-15	-1.3%
Information Not Available	3,611	3,962	351	9.7%

Initial claims by industry

Continued weeks claimed by industry

Industry share of CWC in most recent week

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 November 28^th rather than the week ending December 5^th.

Claimants by Gender