During the week of May 24-30, there were 31,224 initial regular unemployment claims (down 36% from the prior week) and 774,959 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories (a decrease of 155,423) filed by Washingtonians, according to the Employment Security Department (ESD). ESD believes the continued decrease is due to a variety of reasons including fraud prevention measures and more people going back to work with the reopening of some industry sectors and regions over the past three weeks.
In Mason County, there were 216 new claims for unemployment last week (May 24 to May 30), down from 326 the week before (May 17 to May 23).
ESD paid out over $514.7 million for 400,352 individual claims.
| Unemployment claim type | Week of May 24-30 | Week of May 17-23 | Week of May 10-16 |
| Regular Unemployment Insurance (UI) initial claims | 31,224 | 48,445 | 138,733 |
| Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) initial claims | 12,878 | 21,250 | 61,325 |
| Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) initial claims | 10,176 | 19,111 | 59,630 |
| Continued/ongoing weekly claims | 720,681 | 841,576 | 1,410,892 |
| Total claims | 774,959 | 930,382 | 1,670,580 |
