(The Center Square) – Minnesota rang in the New Year with an uptick in new unemployment claims.
According to U.S. Department of Labor data released Thursday, 17,500 new claims were filed in the state in the week ending Jan. 2, a week-over-week increase of 1,229 over the previous week’s 16,271 claims.
The DOL reported Minnesota processed 154,617 total unemployment claims during the final week of 2020, an increase of 25,482 over the previous week’s 129,135 claims.
Nationwide, 77,400 more initial claims were filed the week ending Jan. 2, bringing the Dec. 26 new unemployment claims tally of 844,672 claims to 922,072 claims, a 9.2% week-over-week increase.
The DOL also reported: “The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.7 percent during the week ending December 26, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week.”
The DOL continued: “The advance unadjusted level of insured unemployment in state programs totaled 5,382,459, an increase of 145,444 (or 2.8 percent) from the preceding week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 271,437 (or 5.2 percent) from the previous week. A year earlier the rate was 1.5 percent and the volume was 2,147,170.”
According to the DOL, New York (+10,318), California (+10,071), Kentucky (+4,341), Missouri (+4,105), and New Jersey (+2,851) recognized the largest increases in initial claims for the week ending December 26, while the largest decreases were in Illinois (-34,568), Pennsylvania (-9,026), Georgia (-7,713), Kansas (-3,710), and Texas (-3,531).
Bruce Walker
Bruce Walker is a regional editor at The Center Square. He previously worked as editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s MichiganScience magazine and The Heartland Institute’s InfoTech & Telecom News.
