CARSON CITY —In April, 10,519 initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits were filed in Nevada, a decline of 3 percent from April of last year when claims were 10,842. Initial claims increased from last month’s especially low total by 10 percent. The 12-month average, which best shows the overall trend in claims, fell to another post-recession low of 11,197.
“If year-to-date initial claims totals are compared to the same months in 2010, one of the worst years in Nevada’s claim history, the Silver State has experienced a 56 percent decline,” Alessandro Capello, an economist with the Research and Analysis Bureau of the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, said in press release. This is a more pronounced decline than the nation as a whole, which has seen a 49 percent decline in claims.”
Initial claims peaked during the recession at 36,414 in December 2008, and the low point for initial claims was 9,358 in September 2016. Through the first third of 2017, every area of unemployment insurance activity has continued the downward trend seen in 2016.
Some of these notable activity measures include the benefits exhaustion rate and average duration of benefits. In April, the exhaustion rate fell to 36.7 percent, down from its recessionary peak of 63.4 percent and at its lowest point since November 2007. Average duration, which peaked at 19.1 weeks, is below 13.8 weeks for the first time since February 2009.
An initial claim represents the first stage of filing for unemployment benefits and is therefore most closely related to the number of people who have recently lost their jobs, not the overall level of unemployment. Initial claims tend to increase on a seasonal basis during the fall and winter months, and then fall during the spring and summer
