New Unemployment Claims Dip As Washington Tamps Down On Fraud

OLYMPIA, WA — The Employment Security Departments recent attempts to tamp down on fraudulent unemployment claims appears to be working.

Last week, the ESD reported that it was investigating a spike of 65,000 new unemployment claims in the first half of May, which they believed was likely driven by scammers filing bogus claims in an attempt to rake in unearned benefits.

The jump was notable because the unemployment rate has remained relatively stagnant for several months now. ESD data for April shows the state with an unemployment rate of 5.5 percent for the second month in a row. Before that it was 5.6 percent in February, and 6 percent in January.

Unlike the first wave of claims last summer, the ESD said the new claims were not going through. That appears to be true, as the latest ESD data released Thursday shows that new unemployment claims have dipped back to normal once again — although "normal" for the pandemic is still significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels.

For the week ending May 22, Washington saw a 40.5 percent decrease in new unemployment claims. Total unemployment claims also dropped 11.2 percent from the week before. The ESD says the decrease was driven by gains in the health care, retail trade, and construction industries.

Those are good signs, but there is still much more work to be done. As the ESD notes, even with those decreases the last month's average initial claims are about as high as they were during the Great Recession.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, the ESD has paid out more than $18.4 billion in unemployment benefits to more than one million Washingtonians.