Nevada continued its workforce recovery in November, albeit at a much slower pace than before.
The state added back 2,600 jobs, far fewer than the 12,000 jobs added in October, according to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation's newest monthly report, released Dec. 17.“As we near the end of the year, I am encouraged to see the ongoing growth in employment and declines in unemployment," Gov. Steve Sisolak said in a statement. "Nevada has now recovered more jobs than at the same point in the Great Recession, another sign that Nevada’s economy is resilient and continues to come back/"As we look to the new year, we will continue to focus on helping Nevada’s employers provide good jobs for Nevada families.”The Las Vegas Metropolitan Reporting Area added 5,100 jobs, but its Reno-Sparks counterpart saw a decline of 300 jobs. There are now 988,700 employed in the Las Vegas area, 251,500 in the Reno-Sparks area.Carson City, meanwhile, added 200 jobs for a total of 31,200 workers.Overall, the area lagging in recovery compared to pre-pandemic employment remains the hotel-casino sector, which is still down some 66,000 jobs compared to March 2019, according to the report.
But some sectors are actually up above pre-pandemic employment, including retail trade, which now employs 160,800 people compared to 154,900 in December 2019.Transportation and warehousing is more than 10 percent above pre-pandemic employment at 86,600.
Nevada’s unemployment rate decreased in November dropping the seasonally adjusted jobless rate to 6.8 percent (down four tenths) and the raw rate to 5.7 percent (down three tenths).
In addition, there were just 10,087 initial claims for jobless benefits, about one-third as many as a year ago.“November's report shows Nevada's ongoing recovery from the COVID recession," David Schmidt, Chief Economist for the state, said in a statement. "Nevada's job growth over the month was slower than in recent months and remains at roughly 95 percent of prerecession employment. The unemployment rate saw more significant improvement, falling by 0.4 percentage points, the largest decline so far this year."
