by Bruce Walker
Although new claims dropped slightly from the previous week, Minnesota’s unemployment remains above 323,000.
New claims fell by 1,789 during the last full week of July, from the previous week’s 17,706 to 15,917. The total number of new claims dropped 5,607 in the time period between July 11 and July 18.
During the time period between July 18 and July 25, total unemployment claims in the state increased from 314,937 to 323,619.
In the week ending July 25, 1,434,000 new claims were reported nationally, bringing the national unemployment number to 16.9 million.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.6 percent for the week ending July 18, an increase of 0.5 percentage point from the week ending July 11, the DOL reported. The unemployment rate report lags new claims by one week.
California once again led the nation in new unemployment claims, with 249,007 last week.
The latest weekly unemployment report was released on the same day the U.S. Department of Commerce said that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product dropped an estimated 32.9 percent, the worst decline since at least World War II. GDP is generally viewed as a measure of a country’s economic health. The U.S. began measuring GDP in 1947.
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Bruce Walker is a regional editor at The Center Square. He previously worked as editor at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s MichiganScience magazine and The Heartland Institute’s InfoTech & Telecom News.
