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Nevada unemployment office seeing little change in initial claims

PUA initial claims increase reported week of Oct. 24
Posted at 9:58 PM, Oct 29, 2020
and last updated 2020-10-30 01:00:53-04

NEVADA (KTNV) — For the week ending Oct. 24, initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) totaled 9,036, up 302 claims, or 3.5 percent, compared to last week’s total of 8,734 claims, according to finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR).

Through the week ending Oct. 24, there have been 737,081 initial claims filed in 2020, 715,429 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 eleventh consecutive week to 127,673, a decline of 12,459 claims, or 8.9 percent, from the previous week’s total of 140,132. This is the fewest continued claims since the report week ending March 28 when there were 58,798 claims filed.

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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 (also known as covered employment), fell 0.85 percentage points to 9.15 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 (PUA) program, which provides up to 46 weeks of benefits for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers, and gig workers saw 57,783 initial claims filed in the week ending Oct. 24, an increase of 45,246 claims, or 360.9 percent, from last week’s total of 12,537.

This marked increase is questionable given the underlying economic conditions.

DETR will track this latest data to identify any potential trend related to increases in initial claim submittals.

Through the week ending Oct. 24, there have been 562,389 PUA initial claims filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 89,253 in the week ending Oct. 24, a decline of 867 claims, or one percent, from the previous week’s total of 90,120.

Weekly PUA continued claims are 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 (PEUC) program, which provides up to 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw 83,467 claims filed in the week, an increase of 8,425 claims from a week ago.

A continued increase in the number of PEUC claims is expected as claimants began exhausting their regular program benefits.

Nevada’s State Extended Benefit (SEB) program provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular unemployment benefits and PEUC program benefits saw 6,954 claims filed in the week, an increase of 1,086 claims from a week ago.

Nationally, the advance figure for unadjusted regular initial claims was, 732,223, a decrease of 28,354 claims from the previous week.

The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending October 17 was 5.1 percent, a 0.4 percentage point decline from the previous week’s rate.

The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.