LAS VEGAS (KTNV> — Finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) show initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) totaled 7,525 for the week ending Sept. 26, down 673 claims, or 8.2%, compared to last week’s total of 8,198 claims.
This is the lowest weekly total of initial claims filed since mid-March.
Through the week ending Sept. 26, there have been 704,670 initial claims filed in 2020, 680,754 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 seventh consecutive week to 190,613, a decline of 12,795 claims, or 6.3%, from the previous week’s total of 203,408.
This is the fewest continued claims since the report week ending April 11 when there were 189,007 claims filed.
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 by 1.0 percentage points to 13.7%.
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 11,198 initial claims filed in the week Sept. 26, a decrease of 240, or 2.1%, from last week’s total of 11,438.
Through the week ending September 26, 474,133 PUA initial claims have been filed.
PUA continued claims totaled 95,829 in the week ending Sept. 26, a decline of 5,964, or 5.2 percent, from the previous week’s revised total of 101,064. 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 (PEUC) program, which provides up to 13 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw 37,346 claims filed in the week, an increase of 5,964 claims from a week ago.
PEUC claims are expected to increase as large groups of regular program filers exhaust their regular unemployment benefits.
Nevada’s State Extended Benefit (SEB) program, which provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular unemployment benefits and PEUC program benefits, saw 4,146 claims filed in the week, an increase of 379 claims from a week ago.
Nationally, the advance figure for unadjusted regular initial claims was, 786,942 a decrease of 40,263 claims from the previous week. The national insured unemployment rate for the week ending Sept. 19 was 7.8%, a 0.7 percentage point decline from the previous week’s rate.
The national rate is reported with a one-week lag.
