News Release

For Immediate Release: July 2, 2020
Media Contact: Darlene Carnopis, darlene.carnopis@labor.idaho.gov or Georgia Smith, georgia.smith@labor.idaho.gov

New initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits totaled 5,417 for the week ending June 27, increasing 26 percent – or 1,132 claims – from the previous week.

The four-week moving average rose 11 percent to an average of 4,322 new initial claims per week.

Continued claims – the number of people who requested a benefit payment – dropped by 7 percent from the previous week to 30,866, the eighth consecutive week of declines. The four-week moving average for continued claims also fell 12 percent from 42,160 for the week ending June 20 to 37,122 for the week ending June 27.

Accommodations and food services represented 17 percent of total claims for week ending June 27. Manufacturing represented 15 percent, health care and social assistance 12 percent and retail 11 percent. The aggregated claims for these four sectors accounted for 56 percent of the total claims for the week.

By age, 26 percent of claims were for people ages 25 to 34. Young people under the age 25 claimed 22 percent, people ages 35 to 44 represented 20 percent and workers ages 45 to 54 accounted for 16 percent. Claims were evenly split between genders.

Laid-off Idaho workers filed 162,560 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the 15 weeks since the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration – 2.8 times the total number of initial claims filed in all of 2019 in just three months. Seventy-three percent of the initial claims filed were in the first six weeks.

The department paid out $44.7 million in claims during the week of June 21-27, down from $52.8 million the week of June 14-20. Regular state unemployment benefit payouts were $8.2 million, down from $10.4 million the previous week, but 7.4 times higher than the same week in 2019. Of the CARES Act programs, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation payments (PEUC) were $1.5 million, with payouts for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) at $3.6 million and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) at $31.4 million.

As of June 27, total benefit payments attributed to COVID-19 layoffs reached $567 million. Unemployment insurance regular benefits accounted for $141 million of the total, with PEUC benefits at $8.3 million, PUA benefits at $30.7 million and FPUC payments at $387 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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