New Ohio unemployment claims drop to five-month low
COLUMBUS, Ohio—The number of new unemployment claims hit a five-month low in Ohio last week, suggesting both an improvement in the state economy and a clampdown on fraudulent claims.
Ongoing unemployment benefit filings have also dropped to their lowest level since January — another indication Ohioans are returning to work even as coronavirus cases have increased in the last few weeks.
During the week of April 4-10, 23,117 first-time unemployment claims were logged with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which runs the state’s unemployment benefits system. That’s the lowest weekly total since Nov. 7 of last year, and it’s almost half the 44,985 initial claims filed the previous week, according to the ODJFS.
About 1,200 of those new claims – about 5% — are suspected to be fraudulent, according to an ODJFS release. The number of claims flagged as potentially fraudulent has now dropped in nine of the last 10 weeks, from a high of about 44,000 in early February, according to the data.
In addition, 265,461 continued jobless claims were filed last week, including both traditional unemployment claims and claims for extended benefits, ODJFS reported. That’s the lowest number of ongoing claims filed since the first full week of January, though it’s unclear exactly how many of those claims are genuine.
However, jobless claims are still far above what they were before the pandemic. During the entire month of April 2019, fewer than 16,000 new unemployment claims were filed in Ohio.
Financial analysts say claims for unemployment benefits are generally the closest thing available to a real-time measure of the health of the job market, though they add that other economic indicators must be examined, too, to get a full picture of the economy. Ohio’s unemployment rate fell to 5% in February (the latest month the state’s jobless rate is available), though the state is still down 314,000 jobs from a year ago.
Starting in late January, ODJFS saw the number of new jobless claims sharply rise by nearly 300%. Much – though not all – of that rise was blamed on Ohio being suddenly targeted with tens of thousands of fraudulent claims by scammers mostly working from overseas.
State officials recently signed contracts worth more than $11.4 million to help the ODJFS better detect and prevent fraud. But even so, given the ongoing problems with fraud, it’s unclear exactly how reliable jobless claims figures are these days to gauge the state of Ohio’s economy and job market.
A total of 166,414 Ohioans received federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits last week, according to the ODJFS. The number of PUA recipients in Ohio has been bouncing around as of late: only 94,929 Ohioans got PUA benefits two weeks ago, though 177,713 Ohioans got PUA benefits the week before that.
During the year-long coronavirus crisis, which caused widespread unemployment as businesses were closed and saw sales plummet, ODJFS said it has issued a total of more than $9.4 billion in unemployment compensation payments to more than 986,000 people.
The state has also distributed a total of more than $10.3 billion in PUA payments to more than 1 million claimants.
Until a couple months ago, Ohio — like many other states — has found far more fraudulent claims among Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits than they have among traditional unemployment benefits. That’s because, until the new federal stimulus package passed in December set new rules, less documentation was required for PUA benefits than for traditional unemployment benefits.
Last year, Ohio paid out at least $330 million in PUA benefits to scammers, according to ODJFS. Bogus claims were even filed in the names of Gov. Mike DeWine, First Lady Fran DeWine, and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.
Security experts say scammers – located mostly overseas in countries such as Nigeria, Russia, and China – try to scam every state’s unemployment system, going state-to-state looking for systems particularly vulnerable to fraud. In recent months, scammers have targeted other states with a similar bombardment of claims. In January, a surge in bogus filings led Kansas to shut down its unemployment benefit processing system.
State officials say that Ohioans who find that scammers have filed claims in their name should immediately file a report with ODJFS, then take steps to protect their identity, including those listed on the Ohio attorney general’s website.
People who want to see whether they’ve been victimized can receive a free credit report online. If that website displays an error message (as it did for one reporter), people can request a credit report individually from each of the three bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
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Read More: New Ohio unemployment claims drop to five-month low