Texas unemployment claims increase by 280,000.
Total of 1.3 million since March nearly doubles number of applications from all of last year
More than 280,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits in Texas last week, according to a weekly report from the Department of Labor, as measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus and the worst oil bust in history continued to leave hundreds of thousands of Texans jobless.
Since March when business shutdowns began to prevent exposure to COVID-19, 1.3 million Texans have filed applications for benefits. That’s nearly double all the claims submitted in the state in the entire year of 2019.
Even so, that number likely understates the extent of job losses in the state as overwhelmed websites and phone lines prevent an untold number of people from filing claims. The Texas Workforce Commission, which administers unemployment benefits, has struggled to increase capacity to process claims as fast as they flood in — the agency has added server space and five call centers in recent weeks to address the backlogs.
That means the unemployment rates is likely higher, too. Texas’ official measure of unemployment was 4.7 percent in
March, but the true rate is much higher, at least 12.4 percent, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. And that may still be an understatement since models are based on claims for unemployment benefits, and many people in Texas have not been able to submit their claims due to the backlogs.
“Since claimants have overwhelmed the Texas Workforce Commission’s phone lines, this likely has delayed the number of claims filed,” said Keith Phillips, senior economist at the Dallas Fed, in a report Friday. “The unemployment rate may be higher than what the claims data suggest.”
The national rate of unemployment could spike near 20 percent in the coming months, according to some economists. Houston’s is likely to go higher than the national rate due to the oil bust — onethird of economic growth in Houston’s economy is driven by the oil and gas industry, according to University of Houston economist Bill Gilmer.
Nationally, jobless claims continued to surge, with 4.4 million workers filing for benefits last week. In the last five weeks, more than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance.