City Unemployment Up 1,000% Since Last Year

Nearly 5,600 New Haveners applied for and received state unemployment benefits between March 15 and April 12, marking a tenfold increase since the same time period last year.

Major Justin Elicker shared those Elm City-specific unemployment numbers Thursday afternoon during his daily virtual coronavirus-related press briefing, held online via the Zoom teleconferencing app and on YouTube Live.

New Haven now has a total of 1,619 confirmed positive Covid-19 cases and 59 related fatalities.

Elicker noted that the state Department of Labor published on Wednesday evening a new town-by-town breakdown of unemployment applications and processed claims that provide the most detailed look yet as to how each Connecticut municipality’s labor force has been hit by the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Click here to view the new DOL website that provides unemployment claim breakdowns by age, industry, sex, and town, and here to download the municipality-specific unemployment spreadsheet.

The DOL’s weekly processed unemployment claim numbers extend only through April 12. And the department warns that the data compiled after March 22, for the weeks of March 29, April 5, and April 12, are incomplete.

As limited and incomplete as the data may be, the report still paints a grim portrait of how hard working New Haveners have been hit by the mass layoffs and furloughs that have taken place nationwide in response to the Covid-19 public health crisis and subsequent social distancing mandates. Over 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the past six weeks.

According to the state DOL data, 5,589 New Haveners have filed for and received state unemployment benefits between March 15 and April 12.

“That’s a lot of people who are really struggling,” Elicker said.

That number is almost exactly ten times more than the 555 New Haveners who filed for and received unemployment benefits for the five weeks between March 17 and April 14, 2019.

And during a similar five-week stretch in 2018, between March 18 and April 22„ a total of 574 New Haveners filed for and received unemployment benefits.

This 2020 processed unemployment claim numbers show a steep increase the week of March 15.

In the week of Feb. 16, the city had 74 processed unemployment claims. That increased to 86 the week of Feb. 23. The numbers held relatively flat at 85 the week of March 1. And then doubled to 169 the week of March 8.

And then increased by over 1,000 percent to 1,961 the week of March 15. The week of March 22, New Haven had 1,655 processed unemployment claims.

And, according to the incomplete data for after March 22, the processed unemployment claim numbers for March 29, April 5, and April 12 respectively were 1,183, 560, and 230.

The governor declared a public health emergency around the novel coronavirus outbreak on March 10. The president declared a national emergency on March 13. And the mayor declared a state of emergency in the city on March 15.

According to a March 2020 state unemployment report that does not take into account the full impact of Covid-19 related layoffs, according to a state DOL disclaimer, New Haven had a labor force of 65,314 people as of last month.

According to that report, 62,475 were employed and 2,839 were unemployment, leading to an unemployment rate of 4.3 percent.

Other updates included:

• Two of the city’s five testing sites were closed Thursday because of inclement weather. Those were the new walk-up testing site on the Day Street Park basketball court in the Dwight neighborhood and the CVS-run drive-through testing site on Sargent Drive on Long Wharf. Elicker said both outdoor testing sites will reopen Friday.

• Elicker said that the city’s food policy and elderly services teams in collaboration with community partners dropped off five meals each to 95 different seniors throughout the city on Wednesday.

• At the briefing, the mayor fielded 45 minutes’ worth of questions Wednesday from New Haven middle school and high school, students, including reporters from the East Rock Record, which recently launched a new website for its school newspaper. Many of the questions focused on how the public schools, teachers, administrators, and students will have to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic this summer and fall. (Other reporters did not participate in the briefing.)

How will the city and the New Haven Public Schools system work to protect students’ health and ensure they continue to receive an education if and when in-person classes resume later this spring or next fall? asked Jayden and Ryan Martinez.

“I think it’s really unlikely that we’re going back to school this year,” said Elicker. He noted that the governor has officially cancelled in-person classes through May 20, and that he has promised to make an announcement about the rest of the semester within two weeks of May 20.

“We really want to open up schools again” come September, Elicker said.

That means thinking hard about what physical classrooms will look like and how teachers and students inside of those classrooms will have to interact in order to best protect themselves from a potential resurgence of the virus while also continuing instruction.

Students will likely need to have ready access to hand sanitizer, Elicker said. And they’ll need to be able to wash their hands with soap and water frequently. And they’ll almost certainly have to wear masks.

“The nice thing is, we have a lot of time before September,” he said. ​“We have a lot of time to plan and figure that out.”

Superintendent Iline Tracey said Wednesday night during a budget hearing that she is currently assembling a task force to think through these very concerns: what instruction, technology, facility cleaning, and mental health care look like in the public schools come September.

Watch the YouTube video above for the full question-and-answer session between the students and the mayor, during which students ask about everything from school life to protections for the homeless to how to stay fit while cooped up at home during the pandemic.