PORTLAND, Ore. — Another 36,700 Oregonians filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to data from the Oregon Employment Department website.
There have been 333,770 Oregonians who have filed unemployment claims in the past five weeks.
Here's a look at how many people have filed in the past four weeks, according to OED:
- Week ending April 18: 36,700
- Week ending April 11: 53,800
- Week ending April 4: 78,100
- Week ending March 28: 88,600
- Week ending March 21: 76,500
Last week, OED paid out $87 million in unemployment benefits to Oregonians. If you include the $600 weekly stimulus from the federal government, $119 million in benefits were paid out last week.
In the past two weeks, OED has paid out a total of $184 million in benefits, according to OED's COVID-19 page.
“Even though our system is a few decades old, it is continuing to successfully process the bulk of claims, record numbers of them every single day. And that doesn’t mean there still isn’t plenty to do, “ said Gail Krumenauer, spokeswoman for the OED.
The Oregon Employment Department has detailed information for 31,700 of the 36,700 claims from last week.
The counties with the largest number of claims continue to be Multnomah County (6,800 last week), Washington County (4,000), and Lane County (2,900).
For the third week in a row, the highest number of claims — 8,000 last week — continue to come from the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes hotels and restaurants. There have been nearly 60,800 claims in leisure and hospitality in the past five weeks.
Other industries heavily impacted over the past five weeks include health care and social assistance (30,900), retail trade (24,300), professional and business services (16,500) and manufacturing (18,200).
Anni Tompte is a Portland school bus driver who was laid off March 13. She has had a mostly successful time filing for and receiving unemployment benefits.
“I claimed the next week, no problem, got my unemployment. Claimed the following week, no problem, got my unemployment. Then as my phone started going ping, ping, ping, then I got my federal,” said Tompte.
She added that the $600 federal payment came through to her on Oregon’s system three weeks in row. But then the federal stimulus payment did not arrive in her account this week as she thought it would. And her husband and housemate are both having trouble with Oregon’s system. She is handling it all in stride, while trying to stay afloat.
“If you don’t joke about it you’ll be depressed you’ll get nothing done and you won’t succeed,“ said Tompte.
Nationally, 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past five weeks. Numbers released Thursday morning showed that 4.4 million American workers applied for unemployment benefits last week.
This marks the worst stretch of U.S. job losses on record. It means that roughly one in six workers have lost their jobs in that time.
Resources
To file an online claim for unemployment benefits, go to Oregon.gov/employ or call 1-877-FILE-4-UI. For help finding jobs and training resources, contact your local WorkSource Oregon center or go to WorkSourceOregon.org.
Auxiliary aids and services are available upon request to individuals with disabilities. Contact: (503) 947-1794. For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, call 711 Telecommunications Relay Services.