NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: June 25, 2020
Media Contact: Salvador Vazquez, salvador.vazquez@labor.idaho.gov or Craig Shaul, craig.shaul@labor.idaho.gov

New initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits totaled 4,285 for the week ending June 20, increasing 18 percent – or 654 claims – from the previous week.

The four-week moving average declined 3 percent to an average of 3,879 new initial claims per week.

Continued claims – the number of people who requested a benefit payment – dropped by 10 percent from the previous week to 33,060, the seventh consecutive week of declines. The four-week moving average for continued claims also fell 12 percent from 48,068 for the week ending June 13 to 42,160 for the week ending June 20.

Manufacturing represented 17 percent – the largest share of the total number of claims filed for the week. Accommodation and food services represented the second largest at 13 percent, followed by health care and social assistance at 12 percent and retail trade at 10 percent. Combined, these four sectors accounted for more than half of all new claims filed during the week.

By age, 26 percent of claims were for people ages 25 to 34. Young people under age 25 claimed 20 percent, people ages 35 to 44 represented 19 percent and workers ages 45 to 54 accounted for 16 percent. Male claimants represented 52 percent of total claims with female workers at 48 percent.

Laid-off Idaho workers filed 157,143 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the 14 weeks since the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration – 2.7 times the total number of initial claims filed in all of 2019 in just three months. Seventy-five percent of the initial claims filed were in the first six weeks.

The department paid out $52.8 million in claims during the week of June 14-20, down from $86 million the week of June 7-13. Of that, regular state unemployment benefit payouts were $10.4 million, up slightly from $10.3 million the previous week, but 9.4 times higher than the same week in 2019. Of the CARES Act programs, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment payments (PEUC) were $1.2 million, with payouts for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) at $4.3 million and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) at $36.9 million.

As of June 20, total benefit payments attributed to COVID-19 layoffs reached $522 million. Unemployment insurance regular benefits account for $132.7 million of the total, with PEUC benefits at $6.8 million, PUA benefits at $27 million and FPUC payments at $355.4 million.

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

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