According to an article from The Nevada Independent, unemployment rates in Nevada reached just over 28% in April. Policies aimed at slowing the spread of COVID 19 caused many businesses to temporarily close and, as a result, in Nevada, “more jobs have been lost in one month than throughout the entire 2008 recession”. More than 120,000, or about 36% of people in the hospitality industry lost their jobs in April. Additionally, although they are starting to level off, almost 460,000 unemployment claims have been filed in the state over the last ten weeks.
Nevada has also been accepting applications for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), “a federally funded program that pays independent contractors, self-employed people and others not covered by traditional unemployment insurance…DETR Director Heather Korbulic said more recently that Nevada had accepted more than 38,000 PUA claims in the first 48 hours of the program.”
Although the state is in the midst of its phased reopening process, and many businesses and casinos have re-opened, there are still many people out of work. According to the Department of Employment Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) Chief Economist David Schmidt, “Because this is largely driven by policy response designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19, as businesses in the state are allowed to reopen we should expect to see a corresponding decline in the number of people unemployed as Nevadans return to work.” Time will tell.
