Maine sees decline in new jobless claims

(The Center Square) – Claims for jobless benefits in Maine dropped slightly last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.

There were 1,070 new applications for state unemployment benefits filed for the week that ended Dec. 18, the agency reported on Thursday. That’s 135 fewer than the previous week.

Continuing state unemployment claims – which lag behind a week – totaled 6,111 in the week ending Dec. 11. That’s 322 more than the previous week.

New claims for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance decreased slightly last week. There were three new PUA claims, 17 less than the prior week. Another 18 claims were filed for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, another federal program, 13 fewer than in the previous week, according to the report.

Meanwhile, nine claims were filed under the federal Extended Benefits program that covers jobless workers who’ve tapped out their regular state unemployment benefits. That’s one fewer claim than the previous week.

All three federal unemployment programs, which were created by Congress in response to the pandemic, expired on Sept. 4 but jobless workers are still filing claims for benefits.

The Labor Department’s weekly report only shows first-time unemployment claims that were filed for the previous week, not those that were successfully processed.

State labor officials have noted that the ongoing impact of the pandemic has disrupted normal seasonal buildup and layoff patterns in some sectors of the economy.

Maine has distributed more than $2.49 billion in state and federal jobless benefits to nearly 400,000 jobless workers during the pandemic, according to state data.

The state’s unemployment rate remained largely unchanged at 4.9% in October, according to the Maine Department of Labor.

There were 613,700 seasonally adjusted nonfarm jobs in October, mostly in the manufacturing, leisure and hospitality sectors, the agency said.

Meanwhile, the number of unemployed workers remained largely unchanged from September to October with 33,100 job seekers, the agency reported.

Nationally, new jobless claims remained largely unchanged in the previous week in a sign of a tightening job market amid concerns about the emergence of the highly contagious omicron strain of the virus.

There were 205,000 new jobless claims filed during the week that ended Dec. 18, according to the U.S. Labor Department. That’s the same amount of claims it was filed in the previous week.

Continuing unemployment claims, which lag behind a week, dropped by 8,000 to about 1.85 million nationally for the week that ended Dec. 11, the agency said.

Overall, more than 2.1 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending Dec. 4, according to the report.

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