Since the first week of March, 35,133 people have filed for unemployment in Montgomery County. The number of claims rose in March as businesses struggled in an economy damaged by the spread of the coronavirus.
In the state, 61,770 people filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to data released Thursday morning by the Maryland Department of Labor. That was a decrease from the previous week, which saw 108,508 initial claims.
Montgomery County’s initial unemployment claims decreased 39% in the past week.
Over the past week alone, there were 9,548 initial claims in the county. Last week, there were 15,751 initial claims filed.
Montgomery County has the second highest number of unemployment claims that have been filed since the first week of March. Baltimore County has had 46,956 initial claims. Kent County has seen the least with 777 claims.
On April 9, Mike Ricci, a spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan, posted on Twitter that the state had more claims in March than in all of 2019. Every two hours, about 1,000 calls were made, which could cause some to be dropped because the system can only handle a certain amount at once.
More state employees are being trained to take claims, Ricci wrote. It takes about 30 minutes to file a claim and an average of 21 days to process claims and get first benefit payments out, he wrote.
The state’s labor department posted on its website that its call centers and website are experiencing an unprecedented volume of users. The system has been updated to let people file all weekly claim certifications that have been missed since initial claims.
Call center hours have been extended to 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Questions can be sent without waiting on hold to a new email address: ui.inquiry@maryland.gov.
Briana Adhikusuma can be reached at briana.adhikusuma@moco360.media.
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To see a timeline of major coronavirus developments in Maryland and Montgomery County, click here.
