For the third week in a row, jobless claims in Colorado ticked downward. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment reported 11,633 new claims were filed for the week ending March 13.

That’s a 3% drop from the 11,944 new claims filed for the previous week.

The encouraging news comes on the heels of CDLE’s release of the most recent state unemployment level for January, which fell to 6.6%.

In addition to the regular new jobless claims, unemployed contract workers filed 1,473 new claims under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.

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Ryan Gedney, senior economist for the department, said he expects the jobless rate will continue dropping during the rest of the year.

“I think it is reasonable to expect Colorado to follow the U.S. trend of a declining unemployment rate,” he said. “I would expect a gradual decline in the spring and then as we get to summer with better weather and a higher rate of vaccination , I would expect the recovery to escalate.”

CDLE reports it’s paid out 1,127,465 unemployment claims — including PUA — since March 20, 2020 totaling an estimated $8.13 billion.