Nevada unemployment claims decrease for third straight week

Initial claims for unemployment benefits have now decreased for the third straight week in Nevada.

For the week ending Aug. 29, just 8,032 new claims were filed, 826 fewer than the week before. This is the fewest initial claims number since March 14, the week before the pandemic shut down.

Continued claims, the number of insured workers filing weekly, also fell for the third straight week to 221,599. That is a decrease of 6,604 compared to the previous week and the fewest continued claims since April 11.

In addition, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistant (PUA) program that provides benefits to the self-employed and gig workers decreased over the week by 460 to just 10,411 initial claims, the smallest number since the start of the program. Continued PUA claims fell 11,878 to 116,470.

In Carson City there were just 77 initial claims filed for the week. The capital has 1,705 continued claims. Churchill County had 27 initial claims and Douglas County 63 new claims. There are 358 continued claims in Churchill and 1,214 in Douglas.

Lyon County saw 86 new claims for benefits, bringing total claims there to 1,419.

Another 755 people filed for benefits in Washoe County, which has 15,649 continued claims.