LA GRANDE — Moves government officials made to flatten the curve of coronavirus infections resulted in a spike in unemployment the past seven weeks.

That curve is starting to flatten, too.

Union County reported its two lowest weeks of first-time unemployment claims since the coronavirus outbreak in March, with 130 individuals filing for the week ending April 25 and 142 added to the roll in the most recent week, which ended May 2, according to the Oregon Employment Department website.

Those numbers are well below the peak weeks that respectively saw 311 and 307 people file. Still, they are higher than any total from 2020 prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The 272 new claims, an increase of 20% over the past two weeks, brings the county total since March 15 to 1,619, which is roughly 2.5 times higher than the number of people unemployed in the county in February, according to Oregon Department of Employment numbers.

Countywide, the numbers have followed a similar trend during the time stay-at-home orders have been in place in terms of the most impacted industries. Manufacturing continues to be by far the hardest-hit group of workers in Union County, with 74 of the claims filed coming from that sector, bringing the seven-week total to 644. That means nearly half of the 1,310 people employed in the industry have been laid off in the last two months.

Accommodation and food services saw another 28 layoffs last week and 52 in the last two, bringing that industry’s total to 307. Health care and social assistance had 35 more claims in the last two weeks and saw 20 of those in the last week, bringing it to 189.

The three industries combine to account for 70% of the county’s layoffs in the last seven weeks. Retail trade has seen 151 claims filed, and construction layoffs have put 90 people on the unemployment roll.

Baker and Umatilla counties both saw increases of about 26% in new claims over the last two weeks. Baker County added 139 claims to move its seven-week total to 674, while Umatilla County is up 736 to 3,503.

Wallowa County is up nearly 29% to 254, an increase of 57 claims the last two weeks.

Statewide, there were about 19,600 first-time in the last claims to bring the total since March 15 to almost 382,000. The weekly total is down from nearly 100,000 during the second week of the pandemic-related closures. About 83%, or 312,710, of the claims had been processed through Thursday.

Nationwide there were an additional 3.2 million claims, which raises the number of jobs lost due to coronavirus-related mandates to about 33 million.