NEVADA (KTNV) — The Nevada unemployment office released its weekly unemployment numbers on Friday.
The Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation data showed initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) totaled 8,198 for the week ending Sept. 19, down 134 claims, or 1.6 percent, compared to last week’s total of 8,332 claims.
Through the week ending Sept. 19, there have been 694,881 initial claims filed in 2020, 673,229 of which have been filed since the week ending March 14, according to the department.
Continued claims, which represent the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell for the fifth consecutive week to 203,408, a decline of 2,758 claims, or 1.3 percent, from the previous week’s total of 206,166.
This is 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 0.2 percentage points to 14.7 percent. It should be noted that the calculation of the insured unemployment rate is different from that of the state’s total unemployment rate.
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 11,438 initial claims filed in the week September 19, an increase of 1,120, or 10.9 percent, from last week’s total of 10,318. Through the week ending September 19, 462,935 PUA initial claims have been filed.
PUA continued claims totaled 95,681 in the week ending Sept. 19, a decline of 4,463, or 4.5 percent, from the previous week’s revised total of 100,144. Weekly PUA continued claims are now reported by the benefit week claimed. This follows the reporting procedure for regular continued claims and allows us to understand the number of unemployed workers filing weekly for PUA benefits.
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 31,382 claims filed in the week, an increase of 3,261 claims from a week ago.
In the next several weeks, PEUC claims are expected to increase sizably as large groups of regular program filers exhaust their regular unemployment benefits.
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 3,767 claims filed in the week, an increase of 238 claims from a week ago.
Nationally, the advance figure for unadjusted regular initial claims was, 824,542 an increase of 28,527 claims from the previous week.
The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending Sept. 12 was 8.4 percent, a 0.1 percentage point decline from the previous week’s rate. The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.
State-level data from the U.S. Department of Labor can be found here
