Two weeks ago, the total number of unemployment claims in Clark County — 17,455 — was the greatest since August.
But this week, that number fell to 16,862 claims, showing a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy-looking job market. The number of continued claims has been trending upward since mid-November.
Scott Bailey, regional economist for Southwest Washington, said the claim numbers appearing this year so far are somewhat clouded with uncertainty because of a transition to the new federal CARES Act or a factor with changing habits in the new year.
Regular initial claims in Clark County fell from 1,466 to 1,348, and initial pandemic emergency unemployment claims fell from 298 to 240.
In Clark County, regular continued claims — the category that Bailey said best reflects the health of the local economy — were down less than 1 percent. Claims were up in construction and manufacturing and down in health care, accommodations and food services.
“They kind of balanced each other out,” Bailey said.
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claimants have also been dropping in Clark County.
“It’s too early to tell how many people thought it was ending,” he said. “The transition to the new program should have been seamless. It still depends on people filing claims. We’ll see if that pops back or not.”
Pandemic Unemployment Emergency Compensation claims also dropped over the last few weeks, but there’s been an increase in the state’s program for extended benefits that offer similar benefits.
“The net of those two together has been increasing,” he said. “People shift from one program to another.”
Unemployment insurance claims are spiking on a national basis: Last week, the number of claimants nationally hit 1 million for the first time since July.
That isn’t quite the case in Washington: Last week, initial regular unemployment claims were down 8.4 percent from the prior week and total claims for all unemployment benefit categories were down 7.5 percent, according to the Employment Security Department.
“Nationally with claims data, it’s hard to say because so many states are still kind of a mess,” Bailey said. “We’ve had states that aren’t processing some types of claims, some saying they’ll take some weeks off. A couple of states are pretty unreliable.”
