Nevada sees lowest number of weekly jobless claims since March

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation released Sept. 3 show initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 8,032 for the week ending Aug. 29, down 826 claims, or 9.3 percent, from the previous week.

It’s the fewest initial claims filed since the week ending March 14, according to DETR.

Through the week ending Aug. 29, there have been 670,400 initial claims filed in 2020 — 662,368 of which have been filed since the week ending March 14.

Nevada's jobless rate sits at 14% for the month of July, the most recent month where full data is available; of note,  the Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area has an unemployment rate of 16.4%, compared to Reno-Sparks' rate of 8.1%.

As for the week ending Aug. 29,continued claims, which represent the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell for the third straight week to 221,599, a decline of 6,604 claims, or 2.9 percent. This marks the fewest continued claims since the report week ending April 11, when there were 189,007 claims filed.

Nevada’s insured unemployment rate, which is the ratio of continued claims in a week to the total number of jobs covered by the unemployment insurance system (also known as covered employment), fell by 0.4 percentage points last week to 16.0 percent.

The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides up to 46 weeks of benefits for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers and gig workers, saw 10,411 initial claims filed in the week ending Aug. 29, a decrease of 460, or 4.2 percent, from last week’s total of 10,871.

This is the fewest PUA initial claims filed in a week since the start of the program. Through the week ending Aug. 29, 431,347 PUA initial claims have been filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 104,592 in the week ending Aug. 29, a decline of 11,878 from the previous week’s revised total of 116,470.

Nevada’s Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which provides up to 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw 23,760 claims filed in the week, an increase of 2,125 claims from a week ago.

Nevada’s State Extended Benefit (SEB) program, which provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular unemployment benefits and PEUC program benefits, saw 2,889 claims filed in the week, an increase of 551 claims from a week ago.

Nationally, the advance figure for unadjusted regular initial claims was 833,352 an increase of 7,591 claims from the previous week. The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending August 22 was 9.0 percent, a decrease of 0.5 percentage points from the previous week’s revised rate. The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.