During the week of March 21 – March 27, there were 11,445 initial regular unemployment claims (up 0.5 percent from the prior week) and 430,077 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories (down 1.3 percent from the prior week) filed by Washingtonians, according to the Employment Security Department (ESD).
- Initial regular claims applications are now 94 percent below weekly new claims applications during the same period last year at the start of the pandemic.
- Initial claims remain elevated (as compared to the 4-week moving average of initial claims pre-pandemic of 6,071 initial claims) and remain at similar levels of initial claims filed during the Great Recession.
- Slight increases in layoffs in Construction and the Educational Services sector led to a marginal increase in regular initial claims last week.
- Initial claims applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Assistance (PEUC) decreased over the week.
In the week ending March 27, ESD paid out over $274.6 million for 310,221 individual claims. Since the crisis began in March 2020, ESD has paid more than $16.3 billion in benefits to over a million Washingtonians.
| Unemployment claim type | March 21-27 | March 14-20 | March 7-13 |
| Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) initial claims | 11,445 | 11,398 | 11,699 |
| Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims | 2,384 | 3,383 | 3,041 |
| Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) initial claims | 3,173 | 3,873 | 4,230 |
| Continued/ongoing weekly claims | 413,065 | 417,021 | 430,868 |
| Total claims | 430,077 | 435,675 | 449,838 |
Note: You can find detailed claims data anytime on the ESD website.
