Unemployment after Gustav

Gustav Swells Unemploymentby Ed Anderson - Times-Picayune (excerpt)
BATON ROUGE -- More than 25,000 workers who have become unemployed since Hurricane Gustav have filed for unemployment benefits, 10 times more than the average weekly rate, state labor officials said Thursday. Tim Barfield, executive director of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, said that as of noon Thursday, 25,026 people have filed unemployment claims since Gustav's landfall last week. More claims are expected, he said, but he could not venture a guess of how many or the amount of benefits to be paid. "There are a significant number of claims still out there," Barfield said.