DENVER – Colorado saw a slight uptick in regular initial unemployment claims last week from the week before, and the state again paid out more than $93 million in weekly regular benefits for the third time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the state.
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment said 12,941 Coloradans filed initial regular unemployment claims for the week ending June 6 – up slightly from the 12,149 initial regular claims filed the week before.
Another 10,151 self-employed or gig-worker Coloradans filed Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims – which was also up from the 6,414 PUA filings the week before.
In total over the past 12 weeks, a combined 540,506 initial regular and PUA claims have been made by Coloradans.
The state has also now paid out nearly $800 million in regular benefits from the state trust fund, $227 million in PUA benefits with federal money, and another $1.7 billion in federal dollars for the Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, which gives $600 a week to anyone receiving unemployment benefits of either type.
In total, around $2.2 billion has been paid out in regular or federal unemployment benefits in Colorado since March 29.
For the week ending May 23, from which the most recent data are available, accommodation and food services accounted for 16% of initial claims just before some restaurants were allowed to reopen to dine-in options.
The CDLE also launched a new web page around work search requirements to give more information to people about what is required for them to maintain their unemployment insurance eligibility, as work search requirements are no longer waived.
