Massachusetts Weekly Unemployment Claimant Data 12-24-20

For immediate release:

12/23/2020

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 19, 2020, Massachusetts had 21,069 individuals file an initial claim for regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) a decrease of 3,308 over the previous week. Decreases were seen in most of the sectors. The largest decreases in initial claim filings for the week were seen in the information not available sector, either lacking industry or employer information, posting a decrease of 975; health and social assistance, down 419; public administration, 371 less; manufacturing, less 245 and food and accommodation, down 225. Since March 15, a total of 1,726,534 initial claims for regular UI have been filed. Continued weeks claimed for the week ending December 19 at 159,124 were down 1,922 or 1.2 percent less over the previous week as claimants continue to exhaust their regular UI benefits.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims filed from December 13 to December 19 totaled 5,158, a decrease of 1,065 over the previous week. The second consecutive week of decline in PUA initial claims filings. A total of 899,424 claimants have filed an initial claim for the PUA since April 20, 2020. PUA continued weeks claimed for week ending December 19, at 364,954 was 16,738 less than the previous week.

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 7,617 is a decrease of 1,189 over the previous week. Since implementation, PEUC filings now total 351,399.

The federal/state Extended Benefits (EB) program, which triggered on May 3 due to the high volume of claims, for the week ending December 19 had 14,501 claims filed, an increase of 8.346 claims over the previous week. The increase was due to more claimants exhausting their PEUC benefits and moving on to EB. Since the week of September 6, the first week EB claims were filed, a total of 48,748 individuals filed an EB initial claim.

Initial Claims Filed

Industry	Week Ending 12/12	Week Ending 12/19	Change	% Change
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting	190	226	36	18.9%
Mining	16	35	19	118.8%
Utilities	41	29	-12	-29.3%
Construction	2,625	2,893	268	10.2%
Manufacturing	1,083	838	-245	-22.6%
Wholesale Trade	610	458	-152	-24.9%
Retail Trade	1,700	1,520	-180	-10.6%
Transportation & Warehouse	579	663	84	14.5%
Information	296	209	-87	-29.4%
Finance & Insurance	583	426	-157	-26.9%
Real Estate	236	205	-31	-13.1%
Professional and Technical Services	1,465	1,143	-322	-22.0%
Management of Companies	185	142	-43	-23.2%
Administrative & Waste Services	2,179	2,029	-150	-6.9%
Education	725	553	-172	-23.7%
Health & Social Assistance	2,071	1,652	-419	-20.2%
Arts, Entertainment & Recreation	649	677	28	4.3%
Food & Accommodation	2,707	2,482	-225	-8.3%
Other Services	1,321	1,119	-202	-15.3%
Public Administration	974	603	-371	-38.1%
Information Not Available	4,142	3,167	-975	-23.5%

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 December 12^th rather than the week ending December 19^th.

Claimants by Gender