New unemployment claims up slightly since last week

Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation show initial claims for Unemployment Insurance totaled 9,027, up 244 claims, or 2.8%, compared to the previous week’s total of 8,783 claims for the week ending Dec. 12.

There have been a total of 792,411 initial claims filed in 2020, 770,759 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, totaled 84,416, a decrease of 1,264 claims, or 1.5%, from the previous week’s total of 85,680.

Nevada’s Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which currently provides up to 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw 98,209 claims filed in the week, an increase of 31 claims from last week’s total of 98,178.

Nevada’s State Extended Benefit program currently provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular and PEUC program benefits. Nevada saw 18,705 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,931 claims from a week ago.

The insured unemployment rate for the regular UI program, which is the ratio of regular continued claims in a week to the total number of jobs covered by the unemployment insurance system, was virtually unchanged at 6.1%. Including claimants in the benefit extension programs, the rate, more appropriately called the extended insured unemployment rate, was considerably higher at 14.4%.

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 benefits for self-employed, 1099 contract workers and gig workers, saw 46,755 initial claims filed in the week ending Dec. 12, a decrease of 14,535 claims, or 23.7%, from last week’s total of 61,290. Through the week ending Dec. 12, there have been a total of 766,005 PUA initial claims filed.

There were 79,424 PUA continued claims filed in the week ending Dec. 12, a decrease of 4,353 claims, or 5.2%, from the previous week’s revised total of 83,777. This is the fewest continued claims filed in any week for the PUA program. Applications in the PUA program continue to be highly variable.