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More than 1.4 million American workers filed new unemployment claims last week, an increase over the previous week as new restrictions are being put in place to slow the spread of COVID-19.
That number includes 178 St. Mary Parish residents who filed initial claims last week.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 1.43 million workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 25, up 12,000 from the week ending July 18. It was the second week in a row that new claims increased.
Continuing claims, which count workers who filed for unemployment benefits at least two weeks in a row, were at 16.9 million.
“The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.6 percent during the week ending July 18, an increase of 0.4 percentage point from the prior week,” the labor department said. The unemployment rate report lags new claims by a week.
The latest weekly unemployment report was released on the same day the U.S. Department of Commerce said that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product dropped an estimated 32.9 percent, the worst decline since at least World War II. GDP is generally viewed as a measure of a country’s economic health. The U.S. began measuring GDP in 1947.
California once again led the nation in new unemployment claims, with 249,007 last week.
In St. Mary, 1,061 people filed initial claims this month, an average of about 265 new claims each week.
In the week ending March 14, the last week before business closures and the stay at home order went into effect, 22 St. Mary people filed initial claims.
The St. Mary unemployment rate for June, announced this week, was 11.2%, the Louisiana Workforce Commission reported.
The commission said 16,960 St. Mary people were employed last month.
The St. Mary jobless rate was down from 14.8% in May.
In June 2019, the parish’s unemployment rate was 6.4%.

The St. Mary Sheriff’s Office made three arrests Wednesday on charges that included possession of marijuana, methamphetamine, steroids, Lorazepam and Diazepam. And then the Narcotic Section went to work, adding another arrest on marijuana, crack cocaine and prescription drug charges.
St. Mary Parish Sheriff Blaise Smith reported these arrests:
—Jerret Charles Cortez, 31, Vivian Street, Morgan City, was arrested at 8:10 a.m. Wednesday on charges of stop and yield signs, no driver’s license on person, possession of marijuana and methamphetamines, and resisting arrest or officer.
—Zacolby Lionel Granger, 28, Martin Luther King Jr., Lafayette, was arrested at 12:23 p.m. Wednesday on charges of possession of marijuana, speeding in a construction zone and driving under suspension. Granger was released on a summons to appear Oct. 22.
—Christopher William Farmer, 42, Main Street, Belle Chasse, was arrested at 6:43 p.m. Wednesday on charges of possession of marijuana, possession of steroids, two counts of possession of Lorazepam and Diazepam, and possession of a legend drug without a prescription.
Farmer was released on a $10,000 bond.
—Donald Patrick Duhon Jr., 35, Rev. Bayonne Street, Jeanerette, was arrested by the Narcotics Section at 7:54 p.m. Wednesday on charges of improper lane usage, possession of marijuana, possession of a controlled dangerous substance in the presence of persons under 17, two counts of possession with intent to distribute hydrocodone and crack cocaine, and possession of alprazolam.
Duhon was released on a $25,000 bond.
Morgan City Police Chief James F. Blair reported these arrests:
—Valerie Ann Landreneau, 50, Pershing Street, Morgan City, was arrested at 6:38 p.m. Wednesday on charges of possession of marijuana (first offense, possession of drug paraphernalia, violation of the controlled dangerous substance law-drug free zone, a warrant for possession of synthetic marijuana (first offense), and possession of Xanax.
Investigators with the Morgan City Narcotics Division located Landreneau at an address on Pershing Street on an active warrant held by the Morgan City Police Department. During the arrest, she was found in possession of suspected marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
She was placed under arrest and transported to the Morgan City Police Department for booking and incarceration.
—David Luis-Martinez Vargas, 40, La. 182, Morgan City, was arrested at 9:43 p.m. Wednesday on a charge of domestic abuse law-strangulation, domestic abuse child endangerment law and false imprisonment.
Officers were called to an address on La. 182 for a domestic disturbance. They learned Vargas had committed a battery on his domestic dating partner in the presence of a minor child. Officers also learned Vargas has refused to let the victim leave the residence prior to police arriving.
He was located on scene and placed under arrest. He was booked and incarcerated at the Morgan City Police Department.
Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon reported this arrest:
— Glenn P. Arcement, 66, Cedar Street, Labadieville, ws arrested on on a charge of illegal use of a firearm or dangerous instrumentalities.
On May 8, 2019, near near Lake Verret, deputies responded to a disturbance complaint accompanied by gunfire.
Detectives initiated an investigation and determined that the incident had occurred on a nearby waterway.
During the investigative process, Arcement was identified as a potential suspect. It is alleged that during the confrontation with another individual, Arcement illegally discharged a firearm.
Based on the results of the investigation, deputies obtained an arrest warrant for Arcement.
On Wednesday, Arcement was arrested and booked into the Assumption Parish Detention pending a bond hearing.

An “alarmist” is one of the nicer things his opponents called Dr. Sherwood M. "Woody" Gagliano back in the 1970s, when he began to sound the alarm that coastal Louisiana was washing away and that something needed to be done about it.
When he died July 17 he was called “a Paul Revere” as the first scientist to give an early warning about the state’s rapidly growing coastal erosion and to spell out just what that could mean.
His pioneering studies “marked a turning point in how we approach the problem,” according to Bren Hasse, executive director of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which can trace its existence directly to Gagliano’s work.
It wasn’t an easy turning. His insistence on the need to protect our wetlands butted head-on with some important folk who either couldn’t see the problem, denied it, or who just wanted to continue business as usual, whatever the ecological cost.
Woody’s concerns arose from his fundamental disagreement with the scientific view prevailing in the 1970s over whether overflow from the Mississippi River could sustain the Louisiana wetlands.
Until his first study, it was generally believed that an annual overflow from the Mississippi River carried enough silt to maintain, or even expand, the wetlands.
Woody’s 1970 research showed that levees along the river reduced the flow so much that Louisiana was already seeing a drastic wetland loss because they were not being naturally replenished.
“His overall findings were so unexpected and so shocking in scale that many Louisianians, including many state leaders and Corps of Engineers officials, were highly skeptical,” Mike Tidwell writes in his chronicle of our disappearing wetlands ("Bayou Farewell," Vintage Books, 2003). “Most of the oil companies rejected the data outright.”
Gagliano and his research team stood by their data and dug for more. Between 1970 and 1973 they produced 25 technical reports detailing the land loss and suggesting ways to mitigate it, not all of them universally popular.
He most often got into trouble when he challenged or suggested changes to big projects on the grounds that they ultimately could do more harm than good.
He was criticized roundly in 1973, for example, when he suggested that it wasn’t a good idea to build the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) off the mouth of Bayou Lafourche, in “the most productive estuary in the United States.”
He suggested a better place would be nearer Port Fourchon, where it was eventually built.
Not everyone was happy when, later that year, he raised an alarm over a proposed deep-water ship channel across St. Bernard Parish to link the Mississippi River and the Mississippi Gulf Outlet.
The ship channel, he said, would put much of the parish’s most productive wetlands under water. It was never built, and Woody had a hand years later in closing the little-used Gulf outlet that overflowed with disastrous results during Katrina.
“Criticized” is a word way too mild for the comment in some quarters when he objected in 1974 to a plan to widen and deepen the Atchafalaya River and bayous Black, Boeuf, and Chene so that large drilling platforms could be towed through them and into the Gulf.
The list goes on, but he always stood his ground and defended his data. He was sometimes outvoted but never defeated, and now we know that he was almost always right.
“History has shown that one person can make a difference, and that certainly applies to Woody Gagliano,” Hasse said. “Louisiana owes him a great deal for not only sounding the alarm in our coastal crisis, but for never giving up when few would listen.”
I’m not sure how he would take the Paul Revere comparison. He regarded himself as a scientist, not an activist, and would likely suggest that it was his science, not himself, that finally caught people’s attention.
But he would have to admit that somebody had to do the studies, present the data, and stand up time and again, often virtually alone, to deliver hard truths, even when it wasn’t a very popular thing to do.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters" is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

The buzz in lower St. Martin Parish is about Stephensville’s new park improvements, which could be open to the public as early as Saturday.
But the opening won’t come without some drama.
Members of St. Martin Recreation District No. 1 met Thursday under a pavilion at the park, joined by members of the St. Mary Water and Sewer District No. 1 Commission and Parish President Chester Cedars, who acted as the peacemaker. The boards have clashed over whether the Recreation District should pay to run a sewer line from the middle of its parking lot, where a line already serves the park, to adjoining property owned by Oak Harbor Development LLC.
Members of the Water and Sewer Commission have said the Recreation District agreed to pay for installing the sewer line, and OK’d a sewer line installation serving the park on that basis even though it wasn’t at an elevation that was optimal for a nearby pump station.
That agreement doesn’t appear in the public record as having been approved by either board.
The creation of the park was made possible in part by a land donation and sale from Larry Doiron, listed in Secretary of State’s Office records as the manager of Oak Harbor.
After the meeting, Water and Sewer Commission member Shelby Daigle characterized the agreement as a handshake deal. He said the public benefit for running the sewer line would be to relieve a potential developer of the need to pay to have the line installed. That could make the property and development more attractive.
The issue is also complicated by the fact that Doiron is related to Jesse Doiron, who has served on the Water and Sewer Commission.
Current members of the Recreation District board say they can’t spend money dedicated to parks and recreation to install a sewer line serving private property. Early in the discussion, board members moved to reject the Water and Sewer Commission’s request to install the sewer line.
Cedars said he hopes to bring the two sides together.
“This is very harmful to the community,” Cedars said.
He said he didn’t want to focus on the potential ethics or conflict of interest issues.
Recreation District board member Donna Vorenkamp replied that the ethics issue is driving the board’s decision.
“This is an ethics issue,” Vorenkamp said. “I don’t want to ignore it.”
But Cedars said there is reason to believe the deal was made.
When the Recreation District received money from a 2016 St. Martin Parish bond issue dedicated partially to parks and recreation, the sewer line installation appeared on a Recreation District list of work it hoped to perform.
“I think that representations were made to expand that sewer line … if not explicit then certainly implied,” Cedars said.
He said he still hopes representatives of the two districts can come together to work out an agreement.
At the end of the discussion, the Recreation District members voted to delay action on the motion to reject the Water and Sewer Commission’s request for the sewer line.
Also Thursday, Cedars urged the district’s board to register with Opensafely.la.gov, the state website that offers information on safe openings for businesses and other entities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He suggested that playground equipment installed under a pavilion as part of the new Phase 4 work should probably be sanitized once a day.
With the prospect of new guidance, board members talked about the possibility of opening the park Saturday. Board members say the park has remained closed because of COVID-19 and because construction work has continued.
The $800,000 cost of the improvements was paid for with a grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund matched by Recreation District funds and money obtained through the parish.
In addition to the covered playground area, the park will have a lighted walking trail; a fenced and lighted basketball court with lines for pickleball; a fenced and lighted tennis court; improvements at the baseball and softball field, including covered grandstands and dugouts; a paved walkway connecting the Stephensville School next door to the park; and equipment that looks like playground attractions but is actually workout equipment suitable for adults.