Claim Filing in 2026 in Wisconsin

It has been several years since the claim-filing crisis from the Covid-19 pandemic. In January of 2021, I explained why then proposed changes to the claim-filing process were unlikely to lead to any real improvements. And, in November of 2022, I reviewed noticeable trends in why and how unemployment claims were being denied in Wisconsin.

So, it is time to look at the data since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic to see what has changed with the unemployment claim-filing process in Wisconsin.

To begin, we need a baseline from which to assess Wisconsin’s unemployment claim-filing. Before the Great Recession or any pandemic, in 2007 there were 638,548 initial claims for unemployment benefits. From all of those initial claims, 332,982 people were paid approximately $775,000,000 in unemployment benefits. Covered employment that year numbered 2,732,290. The average weekly wage was $728, and in 2007 the maximum weekly benefit rate was $355. Here is what has happened since then.

Understandably, the Great Recession saw a jump in initial claims and the individuals receiving unemployment benefits from 2008 through 2013 when supplemental, federally funded unemployment benefits (various EUC extensions) were available during those years.

Beginning in 2014, however, a decline in people receiving unemployment benefits began. Prior to this year, the percent of claimants paid unemployment benefits relative to the number of initial claims filed had always been over 50%. But, this percentage plummeted from 56.78% in 2013 to 47.73% in 2014.

2014 was also the year in which the Department instituted a sea change in how it pursued unemployment fraud cases along with the start in the fall of 2013 of a massive revamp/modernization of the claim-filing process.

Note: as part of this ” modernization” effort, the Department in 2017 made initial claims and weekly certifications on-line only. Keep in mind that the claimants’ handbook was on-line only — that is, no longer being mailed out to people — as of December 2013. Mandatory job center registration began on 13 Oct. 2013, and winter work search waivers ended during the 2015-2016 winter season. Despite September 2016 federal requirements that made on-line only claim-filing illegal, Wisconsin went ahead with these changes. The impact of these changes fundamentally altered how unemployment claims were filed.

And, understand that the problems with broadband access in Wisconsin have yet to be addressed since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Here is the data by year for initial claims and the number of claimants paid benefits from 2007 to 2025:

Keep in mind that covered employment during all of these years increased slightly, going from 2,693,988 in 2014 to 2,905,824 in 2025. As evident from this data, the number of initial claims began to drop markedly in 2014, hitting then record lows in 2018 and 2019 just before the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, the decline in initial claims returned along with a sharp decrease in the number of people receiving unemployment benefits during these same years.

So, in 2007 332,982 paid claimants out of a workforce of 2,732,290 meant 12.19% of the workforce received unemployment benefits that year. Outside of the Covid-19 years of 2020 and 2021, the decline in claim-filing that began in 2014 has meant that unemployment benefits have essentially disappeared from most workers’ lives.

Essentially, unemployment benefits no longer exist for the vast majority of Wisconsin workers. Since 2023, less than 4% of the state’s workers (less than 1 out of 25) received any unemployment benefits (compared to when more than 1 out of every 10 Wisconsin workers in 2007 received unemployment benefits).

As set forth in statute:

The burdens resulting from irregular employment and reduced annual earnings fall directly on the unemployed worker and his or her family. The decreased and irregular purchasing power of wage earners in turn vitally affects the livelihood of farmers, merchants and manufacturers, results in a decreased demand for their products, and thus tends partially to paralyze the economic life of the entire state. In good times and in bad times unemployment is a heavy social cost, directly affecting many thousands of wage earners.

Wis. Stat. § 108.01(1).

Has Wisconsin somehow transformed its economy into a full-employment mechanism which has eliminated the vagaries of market economics? Or, has the claim-filing process become so broken and difficult that the state’s workers have essentially abandoned this economic support?

Obviously, Wisconsin’s economy is different in 2025 from what existed in 2007, The rural, small dairy farmer of yore barely exists today. And, the workforce is aging, due to baby boomers starting to retire in significant numbers and so leaving the labor force. But, no one would propose that Wisconsin’s economy has been fundamentally altered under governors Doyle, Walker, and Evers. See, e.g., FoxConn. There is no Wisconsin economic miracle that has made headlines or attracted national media attention.

So, the answer to why unemployment claims have so completely disappeared from the state probably has more to do with problems over claim-filing access than any changes to the economy. Another factor, admittedly, is likely due to the economic paucity of the unemployment benefits currently available. The maximum weekly benefit rate of $370 is paltry and is no longer economically viable relative to the average weekly wage in 2025 of $1,254 or comparable to the unemployment benefits available in neighboring states ($500+ to $900+). In a simple cost-benefit analysis, many claimants probably no longer think the struggle to file unemployment claims is worth the unemployment benefits available to them.

The lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, provide some caution about thinking a fix to the claim-filing process is unnecessary. As these numbers indicate, in 2020 and 2021 unemployment claim-filing became a major and vital economic engine for Wisconsin, with more than one of every five workers in 2020 and more than one of every ten workers in 2021 receiving unemployment benefits in those two years. Moreover, the $600 supplemental PUC benefits in 2020 and $300 supplemental PUC benefits in 2021 went a long way to making these benefits a substantial, economic support for the state’s workers.

Note: In 2009 and 2010 during the Great Recession, over 20% of the state’s workforce also received unemployment benefits during those years. Other years were not as high, but still over 11% of covered employment for each year.

So, unemployment benefits remain essential. The issue is whether the process for claiming these benefits will be fixed before the next economic downturn.