SALT LAKE CITY — The number of Utahns forced to seek unemployment compensation after losing their jobs due to COVID-19 is still climbing — at historic levels.
The state Department of Workforce Services reported Thursday the number of new claims for jobless benefits hit 33,076 last week — up nearly 16% from the record a week earlier when 28,560 claims were filed. The agency distributed $6.9 million to out-of-work Utahns for the week.
A year ago, the average number of weekly applications for unemployment benefits was just 1,131, the agency noted.
The 81,227 people in Utah filing jobless claims in less than a month mirror national trends: 16.8 million Americans fell into unemployment in the last three weeks, the Associated Press reported.
“There are delays,” according to Brooke Porter Coles, Department of Workforce Services public information officer. “However, the system is still in place, it’s running and claims continue to go out and to be processed daily.”
“In the first week that we started seeing high claim volumes due to the pandemic we were able to process 85% of those claims within the standard processing timeline in normal circumstances,” Porter Coles said.
“We can continue to see historically high volume claim volumes and we are systematically prepared to meet that (demand),” she said. “Systematically, there is no concern. Our priority remains on the processing, on getting the benefit out to people because we know that’s what they’re critically in need of.”
On Wednesday, Gov. Gary Herbert announced that Utah would be among the first states in the nation to make a $600 stimulus program available. Under the federal plan, individuals who are eligible for unemployment benefits will receive an extra $600 as part of their weekly payment through the end of July.
Utahns will see the additional money included in their weekly benefit moving forward, and retroactively for those that received a payment this week, a news release stated. In addition, applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for self-employed individuals and others who are ineligible for traditional unemployment benefits will be made available at jobs.utah.gov starting next week. People should expect a 21- to 30-day processing time for those applications, Porter Coles said.
“We continue to receive new claims at an unprecedented level,” said DWS Unemployment Insurance Division Director Kevin Burt. “Amidst this workload, the team stands out as one of the first states in the nation to make federal stimulus programs available. I am proud of their outstanding work and the critical resources they’re providing to Utahns.”
The industries that saw the highest percentage of claims in Thursday’s report were office and administrative support at 12.9%, sales and related occupations at 11.4% and personal care and service at 10.2%. Statewide, the counties with the highest number of individuals filing new jobless claims were Salt Lake County at 43.3%, Utah County at 14.8%, Davis County at 9.1%, Weber County at 7.6% and Washington County at 5.3%.
Nationally, a staggering 16.8 million Americans lost their jobs in just three weeks in a measure of how fast the coronavirus has brought world economies to their knees.
Numbers released Thursday by the U.S. government showed that 6.6 million American workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, on top of more than 10 million in the two weeks before that, the Associated Press reported. That amounts to about 1 in 10 American workers — the biggest, fastest pileup of job losses since the world’s largest economy began keeping records in 1948. And still more job cuts are expected. The U.S. unemployment rate in April could hit 15% — a number not seen since the tail end of the Great Depression.
The Federal Reserve announced it will provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans targeted toward both households and businesses to lessen the impact of the pandemic.
In many European countries, where the social safety nets tend to be stronger than in the U.S., government programs that subsidize workers’ pay are keeping millions of people on payrolls in places like Germany and France, though typically with fewer hours and at lower wages.
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned that the global economy is headed for the worst recession since the Depression. The United Nations’ labor organization said the equivalent of 195 million full-time jobs could be lost in the second quarter, while the aid organization Oxfam International estimated half a billion people worldwide could be pushed into poverty.
Contributing: The Associated Press