Unemployment claims fall for 7th straight week

A screenshot of Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation's website Continued claims, which represent the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell to 313,009. This is a decline from the previous week of 22,173 claims, or 6.6 percent, and likely reflects some claimants returning to work.

Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation show initial claims for unemployment insurance totaled 10,620 for the week ending June 13, down 128 claims, or 1.2 percent, compared to last week’s total of 10,748. This is the seventh consecutive week of declines in regular initial claims.

Through the week ending June 13, there have been 528,545 initial claims filed in 2020, 506,893 of which have come in the past 14 weeks.

Continued claims, which represent the current number of insured unemployed workers filing weekly for unemployment insurance benefits, fell to 313,009. This is a decline from the previous week of 22,173 claims, or 6.6 percent, and likely reflects some claimants returning to work.

The state’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 1.6 percentage points to 22.6 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 24,720 initial claims filed in the week, an increase of 8,519 from last week’s total of 16,201. PUA continued claims totaled 92,845 in the week ending June 13, a decline of 4,564 from the previous week’s total of 97,409.

These totals now reflect the number of PUA claims filed for each benefit week. 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 7,195 claims filed in the week.

Nationally, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted regular initial claims was 1,508,000, a decline of 58,000 claims from the previous week’s revised level of 1,542,000. The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending June 6 was 14.1 percent, unchanged from previous week’s revised rate. The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.