Continued unemployment claims fall to lowests level since April

Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation shows initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 10,938 for the week ending Aug. 15, down 6,817 claims, compared to last week’s total of 17,755 claims.

Through the week ending Aug. 15, there have been 653,510 initial claims filed in 2020, 631,858 of which have been filed since the week ending March 14.

Continued claims, the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell significantly to 240,346, a decrease from the previous week of 95,622 claims, or 28.5%. This is the fewest continued claims since the report week ending April 18 when there were 231,618 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, fell by 6.9 percentage points to 17.3%. 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 program for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers and gig workers saw 12,356 initial claims filed in the week ending Aug. 15, a decrease of 250, or 2.0%, from last week’s total of 12,606. This is the fewest PUA initial claims filed in a week since the start of the program. Through the week ending Aug. 15, 410,065 PUA initial claims have been filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 109,617 in the week ending Aug. 15, a decline of 18,109 from the previous week’s revised total of 127,726. 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 program, which provides up to 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw 19,798 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,780 claims from a week ago.

Nevada’s State Extended Benefit program, which provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular unemployment benefits and PEUC program benefits, saw 1,477 claims filed in the week, an increase of 373 claims from a week ago.

Nationally, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted regular initial claims was 1,106,000 an increase of 135,000 claims from the previous week’s revised level of 971,000.

The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending Aug. 8 was 10.2 percent, a decrease of 0.4 percentage points from the previous week’s revised rate. The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.