BOISE — After three months of long wait times for unemployment claims to be processed, the Idaho Department of Labor has cleared 85% of the pending requests for funds. 

The department as of June 6 has cleared a majority of the 42,000 pending claims, it announced Wednesday, and it expects to work through the remaining 5,500 pending claims by mid-July. A total of 120 staff members are now working to answer calls, reset passwords and other tasks. Wait times are reportedly cut in half. 

This is the first time the department has released the number of pending claims. In the past three months, DOL said the number of claims was unknown, but now spokeswoman Georgia Smith said staff has been meeting about the numbers on a daily basis and they are now accurate enough to release. 

Laid-off Idaho workers filed 157,143 initial claims for unemployment benefits during the 14 weeks since the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration, which is 2.7 times the total number of initial claims filed in all of 2019 in just three months, the release said. Seventy-five percent of the initial claims filed were in the first six weeks. 

The state has paid out $522 million in benefits as of June 20, which is a combination of state benefits and additional funds coming from the federal government due to the pandemic.