SC DEW: Increase in initial unemployment insurance claims last week
(Courtesy: SC DEW/Facebook)
SOUTH CAROLINA (WOLO) – The South Carolina Department of Employment and Workforce reported an increase in initial unemployment insurance claims for last week.
According to the department, during the week of February 21 – 27, there were 4,089 initial insurance claims for unemployment that were filed.
That’s an increase of 384 initial claims filed from the previous week of February 14 – 20, where 3,705 claims were filed.
This comes as SC DEW recently referred 2,855 unemployment insurance claims to authorities investigating them for fraud.
You can click here to learn more about the investigation.
On their intrastate map showing initial unemployment insurance claims by counties, Greenville County had the highest number of claims in the state with 346.
According to the department, since March 15, 2020, 854,215 total initial unemployment insurance claims have been filed in the Palmetto State.
The department has paid out a total of more than $5.4 billion since March 15 in a combination of the following:
- Regular state Unemployment Insurance benefits
- Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
- Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program
- Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program
- Extended Benefits
- Lost Wages Assistance program
The U.S. Department of Labor says the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits increased to 745,000.
According to the department, an estimated 18 million people are still collecting some form of jobless aid, as they are counting supplemental federal unemployment programs that were established to soften the economic damage from the virus.
