DETR data reflects growth of long-term unemployment

Data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation shows that, for the week ending Nov. 14, initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 7,243, down 313 claims, or 4.1%t, compared to last week’s total of 7,556 claims.

There have been 760,038 initial claims filed in 2020, 738,386 of which have been filed since the week ending March 14.

Continued claims, which represent the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell for the 14th consecutive week to 96,872, a decline of 9,079 claims, or 8.6%, from the previous week’s total of 105,591. This is the fewest continued claims since the report week ending March 28 when there were 58,798 claims filed. This decrease reflects both workers returning to jobs and claimants exhausting their regular UI claims.

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 0.7 percentage points to 6.9%. 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, which provides up to 46 weeks of benefits for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers and gig workers, saw 10,745 initial claims filed in the week ending Nov. 14, a decrease of 7,740 claims, or 41.9%, from last week’s total of 18,485. This marked decline comes after increases in the last several weeks. DETR is investigating the cause of the recent increases. Through the week ending Nov. 14, there have been 639,312 PUA initial claims filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 77,402 in the week ending Nov. 14, a decrease of 13,209 claims, or 14.6%, from the previous week’s total of 90,611. Weekly PUA continued claims are now reported by the benefit week claimed. This follows the reporting procedure for regular continued claims and allows DETR 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 94,009 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,798 claims from a week ago. A continued increase in the number of PEUC claims is expected as claimants exhaust their regular program benefits.

Nevada’s State Extended Benefit program provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular unemployment and PEUC program.

Nevada had 11,611 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,437 claims from a week ago.

Nationally, the advance figure for unadjusted regular initial claims was, 743,460, an increase of 18,344 claims from the previous week. The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending Oct. 31 was 4.2%, a 0.2 percentage point decline from the previous week’s rate. The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.