Washington Unemployment: New Claims Up 10.1% From Week Before

OLYMPIA, WA — Unemployment claims have risen once again, according to the latest data from Washington's Employment Security Department.

The week ending Nov. 29 was a promising one: despite the state's newest batch of coronavirus restrictions just the week before, that last week of November showed relative improvement, with drops in all types of initial unemployment claims.

At the time, the Employment Security Department said they hoped the news meant that the impacts from the regulations and closures had started to level out.

Unfortunately, it didn't last. The Employment Security Department's latest analysis shows that 24,587 Washingtonians applied for unemployment for the first time last week — 10.1 percent more than did the week before. In fact, all unemployment claims increased last week.

Though the ESD's latest report only analyzes one week of data and may not speak to broader trends, they did highlight a few points of note:

• Initial regular claims are still up about 145 percent compared with the same week last year. For comparison, at the height of layoffs in spring, the week ending March 28 saw a 3513 percent increase in unemployment compared with that week in 2019.
• All types of unemployment claims increased last week. Total claims jumped 7.1 percent, but there were also rises in new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation claims.
• Claims increased across most industries, though some were hit harder than other. In particular the ESD says the health care and construction industries were the hardest hit. While construction layoffs are common during the winter, the rise in health care workers filing for unemployment has been attributed to the closure of day cares, elderly services and hospitals.

In total, the ESD paid $148.8 million to 300,987 unemployment claimants last week. They have paid over $12.8 billion in unemployment benefits since the pandemic began in March.

Find more unemployment data on the ESD's website.