Unemployment grew 1,840% in just four weeks.

AUSTIN, Texas — The amount of people losing their jobs continues to increase.

The Texas Workforce Commission tracks their claims day over day and compares it to the entire 2019 year.

The total claims from March 15 to April 8 quickly surpassed all of last year.

The number of Texas unemployment claims continue to climb. In just four weeks, unemployment grew 1,840%.

Big company layoffs make up just a small fraction of unemployment claims.

Under the WARN Act, employers are required to provide a 60-day notice of plant closures or mass layoffs. TWC tracks those warnings by yearly quarter.

“The economy is like a series of dominoes that are lined up. The first set of dominoes set up to fall were those small to medium size businesses. People were staying home from restaurants, home from bars. That is a large chunk of the Texas workforce,” said Raymond Robertson, professor of economics and government at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

With this interactive map, you can track closures and mass layoffs throughout Texas.

Look at which companies had either plant closures or mass layoffs over the last three months or select all Texas unemployment claims broken down by county.

The TWC issued the following statement regarding unemployment claims:

"The Texas Workforce Commission has over 1,500 staff helping support unemployment insurance services and has upgraded and expanded telephone infrastructure and website capacity. The Texas Workforce Commission is actively hiring emergency hires and receiving volunteers from other TWC departments and external partners. Hardware upgrades have been made to TWC’s Benefits System, and TWC is working to add two third-party call centers to help take claims. Artificial intelligence-enabled chatbot has been added to the TWC homepage to provide answers to UI questions and 24/7.

100 emergency staff hired to work call centers. We are also working to hire more staff to take unemployment claims in each of its unemployment benefits call centers.

450 staff transferred from other departments to help take claims.

Two additional call centers being added this week to help take claims.

Third additional call center being added soon.

Adding additional volunteers from other state agencies.

Artificial intelligence chatbot added to TWC website (already helped 43,817 folks and has answered 98,065 messages*)

*as of 4/8/20"

If you are looking for work, WorkInTexas.com has 540,195 job openings as well as services to help create a resume and find education and training.

The data there shows the most advertised jobs are health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, retail trade, educational services, professional, scientific, and technical services, administrative and support and waste management and remediation services, manufacturing, finance and insurance, public administration, and management of companies and enterprises.