Oregon Continuing Claims for Unemployment Insurance: Only 1 in 5 Continuing Claims are from the Regular (State Funded) Program.

During the pandemic the creation and expansion of new federally paid programs have resulted in those programs dwarfing "regular"/(state funded) continuing unemployment insurance program claims. 

This has saved billions in payments from the Oregon unemployment insurance trust fund but should those federally funded programs end there would be a severe drop off in the number of unemployed employees receiving benefits and the amount of UI benefits received. 

The graph pasted below tells the Oregon story since the start of 2021: 

1. The Regular insurance share of all weekly continuing claims in the latest week was only 20% of all continuing UI claims. 
2. The latest weekly count of  regular continuing claims is 60,612, compared to a combination of 247,660 continuing claims from the PUA and PEUC programs. [2021 PUA+PEUC continuing claims have been volatile, ranging from 145,984 to 322,519]. 
3. Extended Benefit program weekly continuing claims have dropped off a cliff--from 22,369 to 450 as this program has now "triggered off" for Oregon. 

Note that 

1. Continuing Claims are NOT payments. Mostly recently the OED reported 153,000 people were paid, while continuing claims in the last week from all programs totaled 308,722 
2. ALL programs currently include a $300 weekly boost. Should the pandemic programs wind down after their current early September end date there would be a significant drop in the number of recipients and the amount of UI benefits in Oregon. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.