One of every nine workers on the job in Southeast Tennessee a month ago has filed for unemployment benefits since the coronavirus stalled much of the region’s economy due to the shutdown of retail stores, restaurants and many service industries.
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Thursday that 33,329 people in the 10-county Chattanooga region of Southeast Tennessee filed initial claims for unemployment since Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke shut down non-essential businesses last month. The layoffs have affected 11.8% of workers who were employed in those counties during February.
Statewide, a record 249,729 persons have filed initial claims for jobless benefits in the past three weeks, and that number is expected to rise further in coming weeks.
“The good news is that we went from over 116,000 initial claims for unemployment in the week before last to under 75,000 last week, but these are still extraordinarily high numbers and show the depth of economic downturn we are now seeing,” said Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee. “I’m afraid we could see unemployment approaching 15% in April.”
Nationwide, the wave of layoffs that has engulfed the U.S. economy since the coronavirus struck has forced roughly 22 million Americans to seek jobless benefits in the past month, including 5.2 million more people last week. Roughly one in seven workers across the United States have lost their jobs over the past month, according to figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor.