Mukilteo Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

Unemployment claims dropped by near 5 percent in the latest numbers reported by the Employment Security Department.

During the week of May 31 through June 6, there were 29,713 initial regular unemployment claims (down 4.8% from the prior week) and 729,053 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories (a decrease of 45,906) filed by Washingtonians, according to the Employment Security Department (ESD).

ESD speculated that the continued decrease is due to a variety of reasons, including fraud prevention measures and more people going back to work with the reopening of some industry...