First-time unemployment insurance claims filed last week in Colorado fell to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic triggered orders closing many businesses, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment reported Thursday.

The 5,837 claims from payroll workers were down 9.5% from the previous week. The state has received 542,619 such claims since mid-March. The department didn’t release claims numbers for self-employed persons, independent contractors and “gig” workers for the week ending Aug. 29, citing a “data reporting issue.” Claims in that program increased in five of the past six weeks and hit a two-month high in the week ended Aug. 22.

Cher Roybal Haavind, the department’s deputy director, said the agency is seeing “a high instance of fraud (in the program) and rather than adjust and revise the data each week, we want to report more accurate data going forward.” She also said the agency found “oddities” in last week’s data it wants to further examine and will release data Sept. 10 for last week and this week. The department plans to apply for $2.4 million in funding from $100 million the U.S. Department of Labor is setting aside to fight fraud, which she called “one of the biggest issues facing all states.”

In the Colorado Springs area, the department received 890 claims from payroll workers in the week ending Aug. 15, up 5.3% from the previous week. The agency also received 2,426 claims from area self-employed and similar workers in the week ending Aug. 22, up 34.3% from the previous week and the highest weekly total since the first week of the program in late April. Claims from area payroll workers since mid-March total 56,744, while claims from self-employed and similar workers total 24,797 since the program began. All together, claims total nearly 80,000.

The department has paid nearly $4.8 billion in unemployment benefits since March 29, including $65.9 million in benefits to payroll workers last week, the lowest weekly total since mid-March. The state has borrowed $137.2 million from the federal government to pay benefits since Colorado’s unemployment trust fund ran out money last month.