DALLAS — Something odd has been happening with unemployment claims in Texas. You can see it if you check out the chart for the past year of claims.
After an initial spike in jobless applications in January of this year, the state got into an up-and-down rhythm for many months.
But then…boom!
In the first week of September, though, the state saw its largest weekly batch of unemployment claims not only for this year, but going all the way back to pandemic times in 2021! The report this month showed that Texas had 92% more unemployment claims in the first week of September than it had in the last week of August.
That signals big trouble if it’s true…which the state says…it is not. The Texas Workforce Commission, which handles unemployment claims in Texas, characterizes the recent spike like this: “The increase in initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending September 6th is directly related to an increased volume of fraudulent claim attempts. Since Labor Day, we’ve observed an uptick in identity (ID) fraud claim attempts aimed at exploiting the unemployment insurance system. It is crucial to understand that while we have identified a large volume of fraudulent claim attempts, our systems are working to detect and shut down these suspicious claims. We are actively working to prevent these fraudulent claims from impacting legitimate claimants.”
The agency says that if you, as an employee or an employer, get correspondence from TWC for an unemployment claim you were not aware of, you need to let them know on their secure portal, “By working together, we can effectively identify and shut down these fraudulent activities”.
Many questions are still unanswered
I still have so many questions about this. Have the perpetrator(s) been caught? Did they get any money? How was this detected? Is law enforcement involved? Has the claim system been strengthened?
TWC tells me simply that their, “Systems are working to detect and shut down these suspicious claims.” now. They wouldn’t answer the rest saying they don’t want to, “Provide fraudsters with any additional information”.
But the plot thickens from there
Now, a new week of unemployment data has been released and it raises more questions. The September 13th release shows unemployment claims are not as high as what we saw in the first week of September, but still unusually elevated.
Remember how in the first week of September, unemployment applications were up 92% from the last week of August? Well, the number of unemployment claims for the second week of September is still a very significant increase of 62% from the last week of August.
I asked TWC if the latest batch of claims has suspected fraudulent applications as well. Indeed, they responded late Tuesday: “We continue to see identity (ID) fraud claim attempts for the week ending 09/13/2025, which is shown in the initial claim volume. Our systems continue to detect and shut them down. It’s critically important for both employees and employers to be vigilant and report any suspected fraud to the TWC immediately.”
But if the recent numbers are not real, then what are the actual unemployment numbers here? That is important to know as we are seeing more uncertainty in the U.S. economy. And right now, we do not know what the real unemployment numbers are in Texas.
Another interesting note from the unemployment numbers
We know that public schools have been struggling for years from a lack of state funding increases. This year, state leaders finally signed off on a modest increase in the amount of money the state allots per student. But it was much less than some in education were hoping for.
We have been hearing about staff cuts and school closures. And we may be seeing that reflected in the unemployment numbers now.
The Texas Workforce Commission lists the five industries with the most unemployment claims for each one of the 28 regions it breaks the state into. It struck me that recently in every one of those regions, elementary and secondary schools were listed as one of the five biggest contributors to unemployment claims.
And that holds statewide as well. Schools beat out all other industries for the number of jobless claims for a month-long period from August into September. That is something we did not see for the same time period a year ago, and is a data point we will need to continue watching going forward.