31,000 regular state unemployment claims filed in Washington last week, down 36% from prior week.

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.