Initial and continued unemployment claims decrease again

Initial and continued claims for unemployment benefits again decreased last week.

New claims were down 313 to 7,243, a 4.1 percent decrease.

Continued claims fell 8.6 percent to 96,872, a 9,079 decrease. That is the 14^th week of decreases in continued claims.

But officials at the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation say that isn’t just people returning to work. It also includes a growing number of people who have exhausted their regular benefits.

Those people then move to the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program (PUEC) that provides up to 13 more weeks of benefits. There are now 94,009 people in that program.

PUEC claims are expected to continue increasing in the coming weeks. After those benefits are exhausted, the State Extended Benefits (SEB) program takes over, providing an additional 20 weeks of benefits. That program had 11,611 claims filed in the week, up 1,437 claims from the week before.

Meanwhile, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program that provides benefits to the self-employed and gig workers saw a total of 10,745 new claims in the week ending Nov. 14. That is a 7,740 or 41.9 percent decrease from the more than 18,000 claims filed in the previous week.

DETR officials say they are investigating what caused the spike in PUA claims several weeks ago that now appears to have ended.

At the county level, Carson City reported 85 new claims during last week. There were 38 initial claims in Churchill County, 60 in Douglas and 73 in Lyon County.

Carson now has 1,319 continued claims, Churchill 292, Douglas 905 and Lyon 1,060.