Idaho’s weekly claims decline slightly from previous week

Record amount of $86 million paid out during the week of June 7-13

BOISE – New initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits totaled 3,631 for the week ending June 13, decreasing 8 percent - or 322 claims - from the previous week.

The four-week moving average declined 12 percent to an average of 3,989 new initial claims per week.

Continued claims – the number of people who requested a benefit payment – dropped by 23 percent from the previous week to 36,764, the largest of six consecutive weeks of declines. The four-week moving average of 48,068 also fell 11 percent from the previous four-week average.

Health care and social assistance represented 15 percent of the total number of claims filed last week - the largest share of any other industry. Retail, manufacturing, and accommodation and food services represented 11 percent each. Combined, these four sectors continued to account for about half of all new claims filed during the week.

By age, 26 percent of claims were for those 25 to 34 years old and 19 percent for people ages 35 to 44. Young people under 25 years of age and those 45 to 54 were tied at 17 percent each. Claims by gender were an even split.

Laid-off Idaho workers filed 152,858 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the 13 weeks since the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration – 2.6 times the total number of initial claims filed in all of 2019. Seventy-one percent of the initial claims filed in this period were in the first five weeks.

The department paid out a record amount of $86 million in claims during the week of June 7-13. Of that, regular state unemployment benefit payouts for the week accounted for $10.3 million, a 13.4 percent increase over the previous week, but 8.3 times higher than the same week in 2019. Of the CARES Act programs, Pandemic Extended Unemployment payments (PEUC) paid out $1.1 million, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) paid out $14.6 million and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) paid out $60.2 million. More information on these programs can be found at labor.idaho.gov/Covid19

As of June 13, total benefit payments attributed to COVID-19 layoffs reached $469.2 million. Unemployment insurance regular benefits made up $122.3 million, PEUC benefits made up $5.6 million, PUA benefits made up $22.8 million and FPUC payments made up $318.5 million.

Weekly claims by county and industry are available on Idaho’s claim data dashboard at https://lmi.idaho.gov/ui-weekly-claims