BALTIMORE, MD—As the nation continues to deal with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a record number of Marylanders filed for unemployment over the past week.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that 83,536 Maryland residents applied for first-time unemployment benefits for the week ended March 28. That figure is almost double the prior week’s record-breaking number of 42,981.
That figure seems enormous when compared to the 3,852 people who filed for unemployment for the week that ended March 14th.
For the week ending March 28, an initial 6,648,000 Americans filed for unemployment, an increase of 3,341,000 from the previous week’s revised level. This marks the highest level of seasonally adjusted initial claims in the history of the seasonally adjusted series.
Maryland’s unemployment insurance fund is funded by the payroll taxes that state employers pay. The state’s unemployment trust fund had about $1.176 billion in it as of Tuesday, according to Labor Secretary Tiffany Robinson.
