Nevada initial January job claims see decrease from seasonal highs
Submitted by editor on Wed, 03/02/2016 - 12:39pm
Nevada had 13,742 initial claims filed for unemployment insurance in January, down 5.4 percent from December as the state’s seasonal layoff period began to slow, according to figures released Wednesday by Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
January’s initial claims total is the lowest experienced in a month since 2006, said Bill Anderson, chief economist for the state's Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation.
If the trend holds from the last several years, initial claims will likely decline over the next several months, then increase in June and July. Initial claims tend to increase on a seasonal basis during the fall and winter months, and then fall during the spring and summer. The 12-month average, which best captures the overall trend in claims activity, continues to decline, falling to 12,753 in January.
“Many activity measures for unemployment insurance claimants have been fairly stable as the state experiences improvement in the economy,” Anderson said. “The average duration for the length of time a person receives benefits was between 14.25 to 14.5 weeks for most of 2015. The rate at which claimants exhaust their benefits has bounced between 40 and 41 percent for much of the last 12 months. At their respective recessionary peaks, average duration peaked at 19 weeks and the exhaustion rate reached 63 percent.”
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 peaked during the recession at 36,414 in December 2008, and the low point for initial claims was 10,963 in May 2015.
