In the week of May 9 to May 15, 19,619 initial regular unemployment claims (up 18.2% from the previous week) and 469,098 total claims for all categories of unemployment benefits (up 7.6% from the previous week) were filed by Washingtonians, according to the Department of Job Security (ESD).

• Regular initial claims are now 86 percent lower than weekly new claims over the same period last year during the pandemic.
• The 4-week moving average of initial claims remains high at 14,590 (compared to the 4-week moving average of pre-pandemic initial claims of 6,071 initial claims) and remains at similar levels of initial claims filed during the Great Recession .
• Initial and continuing claims for regular benefits increased during the week while initial claims for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) declined during the week.
• Rising layoffs in the health care and social assistance, educational services and retail sectors contributed to the increase in regular initial claims last week.
• We have also seen a recent increase in fraudulent claims requests, which contributes to the increase in initial claims. Our checks to identify these fraudulent claims are working. These claims will appear in the weekly claim numbers even if they are unpaid.
• The decrease in initial claims for the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program this week is associated with a program change in the existing PEUC application that took place during the previous week.

In the week ending May 15, ESD paid over $ 284 million for 318,367 individual claims. Since the crisis began in March 2020, EDD has paid more than $ 18.1 billion in benefits to more than one million Washingtonians.

To note: You can find detailed complaint data at any time on the ESD website.

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