October 9, 2020

Arizona sees unemployment drop

For the first time in a month, some Arizona unemployment sectors are showing improvement.

unemployment office sign An unemployment insurance claims office.
Bytemarks/Creative Commons

For the first time in a month, the number of Arizona residents receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) has dropped.

PUA is a federal program that allows people who are self-employed or working in the gig economy to receive unemployment benefits. People in those categories are not able to receive regular unemployment from the state.

The number of people receiving the PUA benefits dropped by nearly 20,000 during the first week of October.

That drop marked the first reduction in pandemic program since the beginning of August.

The PUA program has been rife with fraud, so high numbers earlier in the year are blamed on illegal benefit payouts, according to officials with the state Department of Economic Security.

The state put in new antifraud measures and launched a massive investigation into the program at the end of July. At that time there was a major drop in PUA claims, but the number slowly crept up again through August and September.

Despite the drop, 74,591 people did still receive PUA benefits last week.

Regular unemployment, which is a state program, stayed steady during the first week of October.

Last week, 2,701 people received regular unemployment payments in the state. At the height of the pandemic unemployment crisis in the state more than 63,000 received regular benefits in a single week.

Arizona’s drop in PUA and lower regular unemployment numbers last week are in contrast to the national numbers, which have stayed steady since August. Federal statistics showed more than 800,000 Americans filed first-time unemployment claims last week.

By posting comments, you agree to our
AZPM encourages comments, but comments that contain profanity, unrelated information, threats, libel, defamatory statements, obscenities, pornography or that violate the law are not allowed. Comments that promote commercial products or services are not allowed. Comments in violation of this policy will be removed. Continued posting of comments that violate this policy will result in the commenter being banned from the site.

By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.
AZPM is a service of the University of Arizona and our broadcast stations are licensed to the Arizona Board of Regents who hold the trademarks for Arizona Public Media and AZPM. We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples.
The University of Arizona