New unemployment claims in Tennessee and across the nation continue to climb at an alarming rate amid this COVID-19 pandemic. The week ending April 4, there were 112,438 new unemployment claims in Tennessee. That makes over 246,000 claims in the past three weeks. For a reference, there were only 2,702 claims the week of March 14, the week just before the pandemic hit.
Nationally, 6.6 million Americans filed for benefits last week, which brings the total to over 17 million.
Many economists now put the US unemployment rate at 13 percent, although officials numbers have not been released.
