Massachusetts Unemployment Claims Top 1 Million Since March 15

BOSTON — From May 3 to May 9, Massachusetts had 44,274 individuals file an initial claim for standard unemployment insurance (UI), a decrease of 10,949 over the previous week, and the sixth consecutive week of fewer initial claims filing over the previous week.

Since March 15, a total of 821,506 initial claims have been filed for UI. For the week of May 3 to May 9, there were a total of 576,172 continued UI claims, an increase of 3.6% over the previous week.

Since April 20, more than 255,000 claimants have filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA). Between both the UI and PUA programs, more than 1 million unemployment claims have been filed in the Commonwealth.