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Nearly 680K Hoosiers have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus pandemic began

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Posted at 8:53 AM, May 21, 2020
and last updated 2020-05-21 08:53:53-04

INDIANAPOLIS — Hoosiers are still filing for unemployment at unprecedented numbers nine weeks into the coronavirus pandemic.

New figures from the Department of Labor this week show that more than 30,000 initial claims were filed in Indiana for the week of May 16.

Since March, at least 679,551 Hoosiers have filed for unemployment. According to the Department of Workforce Development, Hoosiers were filing roughly 2,000 unemployment claims per week the pandemic began.

READ | 2.4 million Americans filed for unemployment last week

Indiana isn't alone, unemployment claims across the country remain at a record high. Last week, more than 2.4 million Americans filed for unemployment, bringing the 9-week total in the United States to more than 38 million unemployment claims since March.

The weekly figures remain historically high. Prior to the pandemic, the Department of Labor had never recorded more than one million initial claims for unemployment in a single week. At least two times that have filed for unemployment each week for the last nine weeks.


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