Maine’s jobless claims continue to drop

(The Center Square) – New claims for unemployment benefits in Maine dropped overall again last week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s weekly report.

At least 991 new applications for state jobless benefits were filed for the week that ended May 22 – a decline of 233 claims from the previous week, the federal agency reported.

There were 209 new claims filed Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally backed program that covers workers who don’t qualify for state unemployment benefits. That’s an increase of 107 claims over the previous week.

Continuing claims for state unemployment benefits – which lag behind a week but are viewed as a barometer of the jobless situation – are also dropping. There were 11,361 continuing claims for state benefits filed in the week ending May 15, a decrease of 491 over the previous week.

The state has distributed more than $2.9 billion in state and federal jobless benefits to about 370,000 jobless workers during the pandemic, according to state data.

The state’s non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped slightly to 5.3% in April after adding 1,200 jobs that month, according to the Maine Department of Labor.

That’s down from a high of 9.1% last April but still higher than the state’s average 3% unemployment rate throughout 2019.

Gov. Janet Mills has taken steps in recent weeks to lure workers back to their jobs amid a shortage of labor as the state eases COVID-19 restrictions and reopens its economy.

Beginning this week, individuals receiving jobless benefits will be required to actively look for work and accept positions for which they are “reasonably qualified,” the state Department of Labor said. A refusal to accept a job offer will be “grounds for disqualifying a person for benefits.”

The labor department said it is asking employers to report workers who have refused to return to their jobs. Those that refuse could lose their unemployment benefits.

Nationally, 406,000 new jobless claims were filed in the week that ended May 22, a decrease of 38,000 claims from the previous week, according to the Labor Department. That’s the lowest level for new claims since the week of March 14, 2020, the federal agency said.

Continuing claims increased by 96,000 to about 3.64 million nationally for the week that ended May 15, the federal agency said.

Despite the improving economic conditions, more than 15.8 million Americans were still receiving state or federal jobless benefits in the week ending May 8.

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