Las Vegas, NV (KXNT) – More out of work Nevadan are requesting assistance, according to new numbers form the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
For the week ending January 16th, initial claims for unemployment insurance were up 10.1%, compared to the previous week’s total. according to finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR). This is the third consecutive week where initial claims have risen compared to the previous week and the highest weekly total since the week ending August 15.
Continued claims rose 3.0%, from the previous week, the second straight week of increases in continued claims.
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 74,167 claims filed in the week, an increase of 2,568 claims from last week’s total of 71,599, while Nevada’s State Extended Benefit (SEB) program, which currently provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals who have exhausted both their regular and PEUC program benefits, saw an increase of 5,060 claims from a week ago.
The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides benefits for self-employed, 1099 contract workers, and gig workers saw an increase of 575.2%, from last week’s total. Initial applications for the PUA program continue to be highly unpredictable. DETR says that hrough the week ending January 16, there have been a total of 850,622 PUA initial claims filed.
There were 75,897 PUA continued claims filed in the week ending January 16, a decrease of 2,859 claims, or 3.6%, from the previous week’s revised total of 78,756. This is the fewest continued claims filed for any week since the start of the PUA program.
The insured unemployment rate rose to 6.1% from the previous week’s rate of 5.9%. Including claimants in the benefit extension programs, the rate, more appropriately called the extended insured unemployment rate, was 15.7%.