Almost 3,000 Mainers filed new unemployment claims for the week that ended Dec. 5, a five-month high, according to data released by the Maine Department of Labor on Thursday.
The initial state claims are up from the 1,927 filed the previous week. Another 12,600 people filed continued claims with the state.
In addition, 1,200 people filed initial claims and 16,800 filed continued claims for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. The department attributed those increases to people who exhausted state extended or federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits.
In total, about 3,700 Mainers filed an initial claim or reopened their unemployment claim last week, the department said.
The news comes one day after Gov. Janet Mills said Maine will offer a one-time, $600 payment to workers receiving unemployment before the end of the year to partially compensate for the end of federal unemployment benefits. More than 30,000 Mainers are expected to lose unemployment benefits the day after Christmas unless Congress passes another stimulus package.
The department said it paid out more than $1.7 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits between March 15 and Dec. 5.
Nationally, 853,000 people filed initial jobless state claims for the week ended Dec. 5, up 137,000 from the previous week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Another 427,609 filed for federal Pandemic Unemployment Insurance.
“Layoffs appear to be rising, consistent with the resurgent virus,” Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post. She said last week was the 38th straight week that total initial claims nationwide exceeded those in the worst week of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009.
Congress is still trying to hash out a new stimulus plan before the end of the year. A bipartisan plan put forward by Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine and others proposes extending the two federal unemployment programs that are set to expire and that are currently supporting more than 30,000 Maine workers. The plan would provide an additional $300 per week to all unemployment recipients. The changes would be retroactive to Dec. 1 and run through the end of March.
Shierholz argued for unemployment benefits as a great stimulus to the economy, saying reinstating and extending pandemic unemployment insurance would create or save more than 5 million jobs in the United States.