NJ Biz: Weekly NJ jobless claims drop 45% as unemployment rate stalls for months

By Daniel Munoz

New week-to-week jobless claims in New Jersey amid the pandemic nearly halved as the state’s unemployment rate stubbornly hovers just below 8%, according to data from the federal and state labor departments.

For the week ending April 10, there were 10,743 people in the state who filed for unemployment, a roughly 45% drop from the 19,875 people who filed claims the prior week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

New Jersey’s unemployment rate for March clocked in at 7.7%, a rate it’s been at since last year. The unemployment rate was 7.8% in both February and January, and 7.7% in December 2020.

All told, more than 2.1 million people in the state have filed for unemployment since March 2020, when Gov. Phil Murphy ordered sweeping business closures and restrictions in a bid to halt the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the state.

Since then, the state has given out $26.5 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits, with the unemployment rate surging to all-time record highs in the past 13 months. More than 100,000 people in the state have been without work that entire time, according to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Read the full report here.