Initial unemployment claims keep trending down

First-time claims show 8-percent drop from previous week

Idaho’s skyrocketing unemployment rate through the COVID-19 pandemic showed another sign of promise after numbers released Thursday from the state’s Department of Labor revealed a continued downward trend in initial claims.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance last week hit 3,631, an 8 percent drop from the previous week’s figures. The otherwise-staggering number is part of a continuing trend in new claims over the past six weeks, an optimistic sign after unemployment throughout the state exploded to 11.5 percent once the COVID-19 pandemic compelled Gov. Brad Little to force a statewide stay-home order March 25.

The announcement of the 322 fewer initial claims comes on the heels of Little’s newly-implemented package to pay up to $1,500 to each Idahoan who successfully returns to work. The one-time payment, ultimately funded by the federal CARES Act, is meant to counteract the soon-to-expire $600 weekly benefit to unemployed Idahoans on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Some local industry experts believe the area’s unemployment situation will dramatically shift once the federally-mandated $600 weekly stipend expires at the end of July. Chris Cragun, lead recruiter for Integrated Personnel of Coeur d’Alene, said getting out-of-work applicants to actually accept a position has been harder than it might sound.

“We’ve actually been struggling to get anybody in the door to apply,” Cragun said. “I think people are riding out the unemployment as much as they can. I’ve offered people jobs — even the same day they apply — and I never hear back. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the $600 goes away.”

Cragun added that many of the applicants who’ve approached Integrated Personnel are looking for summer jobs, a sign of furloughed employees making significant changes once they re-enter the workforce.

“I see a lot of people applying for summer jobs,” Cragun explained, “because they’re going back to school after the summer. They’re either not wanting to or not expecting to go back.” The decline in new claims goes in tandem with six straight weeks of decline in continued claims. The 36,764 continued claims filed last week were a 23 percent drop from the week before. After processing a healthy chunk of the backlog, the department paid out $86 million in claims last week, a state record. While the numbers are promising, officials say they represent only one piece of a greater economic puzzle.

“It’s a little too early to say, because we don’t know all of the economic damage under the hood because of the damage done by the lockdown,” said Sam Wolkenhauer, economist with the Idaho Department of Labor. “Initial claims, they don’t tell you a complete story. You could have a situation where a lot of people are laid off all at once, but while those workers stay on unemployment week after week, they don’t register with weekly initial claims.”

Wolkenhauer said the key indicator will be overall job creation, a number that will be compiled and released closer toward the end of June.

Not all news from the Idaho Department of Labor was promising. While the department is making headway on processing claims, Labor officials said Thursday that some awaiting their benefits will likely not receive their payments until the end of July. Nearly 150,000 claims have been filed since the pandemic began, swamping the department with requests for relief. Little signed an executive order in late March as the first in a series of moves to ease restrictions on unemployment benefits. Since then, the number of Idahoans has been halved, but nearly 20,000 are still awaiting their benefits.