Salem's Unemployment Rate Is Highest Mayor Has Ever Seen

SALEM, MA — The city's unemployment rate of more than 18 percent is "the highest I've ever seen," Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll said in a virtual meeting of the ordinance, license and legal affairs subcommittee of city council Tuesday.

"It’s higher than the state average at 15%, and two months ago we were at 3.5% unemployment - we are now at over 18%," Driscoll said. "It’s the highest unemployment rate I’ve ever seen in my history in Salem."

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that unemployment in Massachusetts was 15.1 percent in April, up from 2.9 percent in March and the highest since the Great Depression. In the nine weeks since companies began laying off and furloughing workers, 898,085 Massachusetts residents have applied for unemployment benefits, which is more than the total number of jobs added since the end of the Great Recession.

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Nearly two-thirds of the lost jobs are in the hospitality sector.

The unprecedented job losses during the coronavirus economic slowdown have not been spread evenly across Massachusetts, with poor, urban cities like Lawrence and Springfield, and towns with seasonal economies like those on Cape Cod and in Salem having far greater rates of estimated unemployment than other places.

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Dave Copeland writes for Patch and can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).