OLYMPIA — Washington state was among several states that saw a surge in claims for unemployment benefits as businesses started to temporarily close under state-mandated orders to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor and the state Employment Security Department showed that that 133,464 new claims for unemployment benefits were filed with the state during the week of March 15-21, a more than nine-fold increase over the previous week.
The state agency has been averaging between 13,000 and 25,000 phone calls every day into its claim centers, spokesman Nick Demerice said. The first week of March, it was between 1,400 and 2,500. He said that during business hours, the agency’s website has averaged 3,000 concurrent users every day since last Tuesday and that in the past two weeks alone the website had 50% of the total active users of all 2019.
Based on the number of claims that have come in already this week and the number of calls the agency is receiving, Employment Security Department Commissioner Suzi LeVine said the numbers will continue to climb in the state.