The Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reports that 18,390 Nevadans filed for first time unemployment insurance last week, an increase of 2,842 initial claims, or 18.3%. The previous week a total of 15,548 people applied for jobless benefits. 

This is also the fifth straight week of increases in regular initial claims. Through the week ending July 25, there have been 611,090 initial claims filed in 2020, 589,438 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, rose to 346,138, an increase from the previous week of 40,061 claims, or 13.1%. This is the fourth consecutive week of increases in continued claims and the largest week-over-

week increase since mid-May.

With that, Nevada's insured unemployment rose by 2.9 percentage points to 24.9%. 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 for the self-employed, 1099 contract workers, and gig workers saw 34,072 initial claims filed in the week ending July 25, an increase of 16,536, or 74.2%, from last week’s total of 19,557. Since the PUA program began, 366,608 initial claims have been filed.

PUA continued claims totaled 138,702 in the week ending July 25, a decline of 16,536 from the previous week’s revised total of 155,238. Weekly PUA continued claims are now reported by the benefit week claimed.

Related: DETR Working to Fix System Issues With Pending Unemployment Claims 

DETR previously said that standard claims are taking anywhere from six to eight weeks to get through - depending on the complexity of the claim.

They add that PUA delays are even longer with tens of thousands of people awaiting decisions.

In a statement, DETR says, "We continue to work in attending the system issue and monitoring our site while addressing the claims impacted by the recently announced system error. Claims will be updated in groups resulting in payments being issued next week. Claimants are not required to take any action."

One of the issues DETR has been dealing with, is some of their callbacks are being blocked. Check with your phone providers to make sure these numbers can get through:

702-486-0350

775-684-0350

775-687-7101

702-486-0185

702-486-3387

(DETR contributed to this report.)

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