DETR reports 2nd straight week of rising unemployment claims

Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation show initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 14,666 for the week ending July 11, up 2,182 claims, or 17.5 percent, compared to last week’s total of 12,484. This is the third consecutive week of increases in regular initial claims.

Through the week ending July 11, there have been 577,152 initial claims filed in 2020, 550,500 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, rose to 295,994, an increase from the previous week of 8,026 claims, or 2.8 percent. This is the second straight week of increases in continued 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, rose by 0.4 percentage points to 21.3 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 program for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers and gig workers saw 26,999 initial claims filed in the week ending July 11, a decrease of 35,811, or 57 percent, from last week’s total of 62,810. Since the PUA program began, 312,979 initial claims have been filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 135,727 in the week ending July 11, a decline of 40,208 from the previous week’s revised total of 175,935. 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 10,457 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,052 from a week ago.

Nationally, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted regular initial claims was 1,300,000 a decline of 10,000 claims from the previous week’s revised level of 1,310,000. The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending July 4 was 11.9 percent, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from the previous week’s revised rate.