Iowa receives 10,112 new unemployment claims in first week of June

Iowa Workforce Development received 10,112 new unemployment claims between May 31 and June 6, Iowa Workforce Development said Thursday morning.

It's an increase of more than 3,000 claims from the previous week, but it remains low compared to numbers earlier in the pandemic.

There were 159,966 continuing unemployment claims last week, which is a slight decrease.

At the peak of the pandemic's influence on the Iowa economy, the state had 67,334 new claims between March 29 and April 4. Including weekends, that was equivalent to a new claim in the state every nine seconds.

Manufacturing remains the hardest-hit sector with 2,080 claims, followed by self-employed and independent contractors (1,421), health care and social assistance (1,010), and education services (722).

Last week's unemployment claims resulted in $99.2 million in federal benefits, $6.0 million in state-issued Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and $3.7 million in Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation.

These numbers only include people actively seeking work and do not necessarily give a full view of how many people are out of work.

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