The Employment Security Department reports another sizable drop in unemployment claims.
During the week of May 24-30, there were 31,224 initial regular unemployment claims (down 36% from the prior week) and 774,959 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories (a decrease of 155,423) filed by Washingtonians, according to the Employment Security Department (ESD). ESD believes the continued decrease is due to a variety of reasons including fraud prevention measures and more people going back to work with the reopening of some industry sectors and regions over the past three weeks.
The table below, from ESD, includes the federal unemployment programs.
Unemployment claim type
For week of
May 24-30
For week of
May 17-23
For week of
May 10-16
Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) initial claims
31,224
48,445
138,733
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims
12,878
21,250
61,325
Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) initial claims
10,176
19,111
59,630
Continued/ongoing weekly claims
720,681
841,576
1,410,892
Total claims
774,959
930,382
1,670,580
Progress, it seems, but the numbers remain disturbingly high:
A total of 2,045,863 initial claims have been filed during the pandemic (1,280,711 regular unemployment insurance, 409,566 PUA and 355,523 PEUC)
The Seattle Times reports on the magnitude of the fraudulent UI fraud scheme.
Two weeks after revelations of a massive fraud scheme that temporarily shut down Washington’s unemployment system, state officials have acknowledged that criminals may have stolen between $550 million and $650 million.
Of that, the state has recovered $333 million, up from around $300 million reported last week, the state Employment Security Department said Thursday.
