April 7, 2020
Mass. food & retail industries had most unemployment claims following coronavirus shutdown
Photo | Grant Welker
Via Italian Table in Worcester is among the restaurants that have closed entirely during the coronavirus pandemic.
By Grant Welker
When the coronavirus pandemic has forced business closures across Massachusetts and beyond, certain industries were hurt far more than others.
None have taken a worse hit than food & accommodation as well as retail, two sectors combined had nearly 105,000 initial unemployment claims in the two weeks ending March 28, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. That compares to 2,302 total claims for the week ending March 14, before the pandemic-caused shutdown of non-essential businesses began on March 18.
In total, Massachusetts unemployment claims rose 1900% in the week ending March 21 and then another 22% in the week ending March 28. Over the course of the last three weeks, Massachusetts unemployment claims have risen from 7,449 to 148,452 to 181,062.
No industry has been untouched.
Health and social assistance jobs, critical to dealing with the outbreak and related health issues including behavioral health, showed a nearly 50-fold increase in unemployment claims in the week ending March 28 compared to two weeks prior.
Unemployment claims for education jobs, which are prominent in Central Massachusetts, rose 25-fold, and those in manufacturing rose 31-fold.
Local employment information for Central Massachusetts isn't available for anything more recently than February, leaving an open question for a month or more on how much the region's workforce will take a hit with closures than began in mid- to late March.
Massachusetts, with an economy more reliant on health and education services and less on tourism and hospitality than the nation as a whole, is projected to fare relatively better than most in the coming months. But that won't mean it'll be spared from potentially shocking unemployment figures.
The Economic Policy Institute, an independent nonprofit think tank, has projected Massachusetts to lose more than 473,000 jobs as a result of the pandemic, 14.6% of its private-sector workforce. That would give the state an unemployment rate in July of 15.1%, according to the Washington, D.C., group, compared to 2.8% in February as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those forecasts account for the federal CARES Act, which is aimed at keeping businesses afloat and workers employed during the pandemic-related shutdown. The U.S. unemployment average by July would be 15.6%, the group said, with nearly 20 million people out of work.
Massachusetts would fare better than most states but still exceed the worst of any state during the Great Recession, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which was Michigan at 14.6% in June 2009.
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