Vermont Business MagazineWeekly unemployment claims continued to rise last week after a one-week reprieve.Claims have been increasing steadily since the end of summer. Claims are still lower than they were the same time last year, which has been the case for most weeks in 2017. Holiday hiringshould reverse the increase in claims for a short period, until after Christmas when claims typically spike. For the week of November 18, 2017, there were 661 claims, 122 more than than they were last week and 31 fewer than they were a year ago.Altogether 3,756 new and continuing claims were filed, an increase of 527 from a week ago, but 538 fewer than a year ago.
For UI claims last week, as usual, by industry Services accounted for the most claims (45 percent of the total), while Manufacturing claims decreased and Construction increased from 92 to 172 claims.
The Department processed 0 First Tier claims for benefits under Emergency Unemployment Compensation, 2008 (EUC08).
Vermont's unemployment rate for October was 2.9 percent. This reflects no change from the revised September rate (2.9 percent), as all the major indicators improved.SEESTORY.
On July 1, 2017, the state reduced taxable rates for individual employers according to their experience rating. The rate reduction cut the highest UI tax rate from 8.4 percent to 7.7 percent, and the lowest rate from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. Additionally, July 1 marked the sunset of a provision that required claimants to wait one week between the time they were determined eligible for benefits to when they could collect those benefits.
The Unemployment Weekly Report can be found at:http://www.vtlmi.info/. Previously released Unemployment Weekly Reports and other UI reports can be found at:http://www.vtlmi.info/lmipub.htm#uc
NOTE: Employment (nonfarm payroll)- A count of all persons who worked full- or part-time or received pay from a nonagricultural employer for any part of the pay period which included the 12th of the month. Because this count comes from a survey of employers, persons who work for two different companies would be counted twice. Therefore, nonfarm payroll employment is really a count of the number of jobs, rather than the number of persons employed. Persons may receive pay from a job if they are temporarily absent due to illness, bad weather, vacation, or labor-management dispute. This count is based on where the jobs are located, regardless of where the workers reside, and is therefore sometimes referred to as employment "by place of work." Nonfarm payroll employment data are collected and compiled based on the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, conducted by the Vermont Department of Labor. This count was formerly referred to as nonagricultural wage and salary employment.
