Las Vegas, NV (KXNT) - For the week ending February 20th, initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 1.8% compared to the previous week’s total of 7,378 claims, according to finalized data from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR).
Through the week ending February 20, there have been a total of 858,978 initial claims filed since the week ending March 14, 2020.
Continued claims decreased by 7.3%, from the previous week’s total of 77,310. This is the first sizable decline in continued claims this year.
Nevada’s Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which provides benefits to individuals who have exhausted their regular unemployment benefits, saw a decline of 2,941 claims from last week’s total of 59,448. The passage of HR 133, Continued Assistance Act, 2021, updated the number of available benefit weeks for the PEUC program. Originally 13 weeks, starting the week ending January 2, claimants may be eligible for up to an additional 11 weeks of PEUC in certain circumstances.
Nevada’s State Extended Benefit (SEB) program currently provides up to 20 weeks of benefits to individuals in regular UI who have exhausted both their regular and PEUC program benefits. Nevada saw 76,143 claims filed in the week, an increase of 2,244 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 (also known as covered employment), fell to 5.4% from the previous week’s rate of 5.8%. Including claimants in the benefit extension programs, the rate, more appropriately called the extended insured unemployment rate, was 15.4%.
The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides benefits for self-employed, 1099 contract workers, and gig workers saw a decline of 48.4%, from last week’s total.