Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

Here’s a statistic that doesn’t bode well for Tennessee.

According to the latest report from WalletHub, the Volunteer State ranked #4 in the country for the week of June 26 in terms of the greatest increase in new unemployment claims. It was part of a trend that saw about two-thirds of the states reporting unemployment claims for that week that were higher than in the previous week. Perhaps as troubling, if not more so, was the fact that Tennessee was one of 23 states – almost one-half – that had unemployment claims for the week of June 26 that were higher than in the same week pre-pandemic (2019).

WalletHub’s analysis of the Volunteer State data revealed these trends:

• The increase in unemployment claims the week of June 26, when compared to June 19, were up by 67.74 percent;
• The increase compared to the same week four years ago in 2019 was 25.17 percent; and
• The jump between the week of June 26, 2023 and the same week a year ago was a whopping 256.72 percent.

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