COLUMBUS — For the week ending April 4, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) reported 226,007 initial jobless claims to the U.S. Department of Labor, which is the second straight week that more than 200,000 new claims were filed by Ohioans.

The number of initial jobless claims filed in Ohio over the last three weeks stands at 696,519.

To put that in perspective, 364,603 initial jobless claims were filed during the entire year in 2019.

Over these last three weeks, ODJFS has distributed more than $124 million in unemployment compensation payments to more than 195,000 claimants.

ODJFS urges individuals to file their claims online, if possible, at unemployment.ohio.gov. Each claim is important to us, and we recognize the hardship that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on many Ohio families.

We are hiring more people, working longer hours, and adding more technological capacity so that we can serve Ohioans as quickly as possible. We have extended our call center to a seven-day-a-week operation and by the end of this week we will have close to 1,000 staff taking calls.

All eligible Ohioans will receive their unemployment benefits – and any delays in processing their claims will not reduce the amount received.