AUGUSTA — For the week ending March 6, the Maine Department of Labor recorded about 1,500 initial claims filed for state unemployment insurance, and 130 initial claims filed for federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).

In total, approximately 2,000 people were filing an initial claim or reopening their unemployment claim.

About 16,000 weekly certifications, or continued claims, were filed last week for state unemployment, with another 13,400 weekly certifications filed under PUA. In addition, about 19,700 weekly certifications were filed for the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program. Weekly certifications must be filed by claimants every week in order to continue to receive unemployment benefits.

Between March 15, 2020 and March 6, 2021, the Maine Department of Labor has paid out over $1.96 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits.

The Department has handled approximately 242,500 initial claims for the state unemployment program and 109,400 initial claims for the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program. There have been over 3.5 million weekly certifications filed.

Fraud Update

The Maine Department of Labor continues its careful review of all claims, and to evolve its fraud prevention techniques.

During the week ending March 6, the Department cancelled 512 initial claims and 1 weekly certification suspected to be fraudulent.

Unemployment imposter fraud is when a person's Personally Identifiable Information, or PII, is stolen and used illegally to apply for unemployment benefits. Maine is one of many U.S. states working in close collaboration with state and federal law enforcement and regulatory agencies to investigate and prevent it.

Claimants log-in information could also be potentially obtained by criminals if someone uses the same log-in information for multiple websites and that log-in information is compromised. The Department strongly recommends that claimants use a password that is unique to their unemployment account and is not used for anything else.

The Department encourages anyone who believes that someone else has used their or their employees personal information to file a fraudulent unemployment application to notify the Department immediately using this form: https://www.maine.gov/unemployment/idtheft/