Unemployment numbers in Ohio continue to surge as the coronavirus pandemic causes another 272,117 people to claim unemployment benefits, according to Fox19. Last week, 196,297 people filed for unemployment benefits.
This means that in the last two weeks 468,414 Ohioans have filed for government assistance, which is more than all of the 364,603 jobless claims that happened in 2019.
Last week, 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the week of March 25. This beat the previous record of 3.3 million people that was set the prior week, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics.
Previously, the two highest weeks for unemployment claims came in 1982 with 695,000 and in March 2009 at 665,000, CNBC reports.
Of these almost 10 million jobless claims, Ohioans make up almost five percent.
To put this into perspective, Ohio had a total of 13,951 unemployment claims from March 1 to March 14. Yet these last two weeks, the Buckeye State saw the third biggest jump in total number of these claims, according to PBS. This was a 3,347 percent increase.
The number of Ohioans who will be laid off because of COVID-19 is likely to increase as Gov. Mike DeWine said this week that he might extend the stay at home order, which is set to expire April 6.
“We cannot let this monster up. We have to keep battling it. We can’t walk away or it’s going to rear up and it’s just going to kill more Ohioans,” he said during Tuesday’s press conference. “So we’re not to the point where we can let up.”
With all these new jobless claims, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is having a hard time keeping up. Lt. Governor Jon Husted said that the state’s unemployment website traffic increased 20-fold, and Ohio is looking to double its workers at the unemployment call center, according to News5Cleveland.
“I want you to know your voices are being heard and they’re being acted upon,” he said at Tuesday’s press conference.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Star News Digital Media. If you have any tips, email Zachery at [email protected].
