There were 3,510 people who filed initial unemployment claims in Montgomery County last week, according to data released Thursday morning by the Maryland Department of Labor.
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits decreased 28% from the week before.
The decrease followed two weeks of decreases — 10% and 23% — and one week of an increase — 10%. Those were preceded by four weeks of steady drops ranging from 3% to 46%.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 120,008 people have filed initial unemployment claims in the county.
Montgomery County had the fourth highest number of initial claims last week behind Prince George’s County (5,352), Baltimore City (4,872), and Baltimore County (4,599).
Of the claims filed last week in Montgomery County, 2,058 were regular claims and 1,452 were filed under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Emergency Compensation (PEUC) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) programs.
For the second week in a row, initial claims across the state increased while the county’s decreased.
Statewide, there were 56,126 initial claims filed by residents — a 17% increase from the week before.
On June 25, the state Labor Department announced that it has paid more than $3.3 billion in benefits and processed 95.6% of all complete claims.
Between March 9 and June 20, more than 546,900 claims were processed statewide and more than 98,000 were denied for not meeting program requirements.
Briana Adhikusuma can be reached at briana.adhikusuma@bethesdda-remix.newspackstaging.com.