Thread: Nevada Unemployment Reaches New Record

Nevada Unemployment Reaches New Record

Updated: Sep 18, 2009 4:16 PM EDT

Unemployment in Nevada has risen to 13.2-percent. The jobless rate for Las Vegas is even higher at 13.4-percent. Both are new records.

More than 182,000 people are unemployed right now and looking for work and unemployment has nearly doubled since August of last year.

Construction and hospitality jobs continue to get hit the hardest. Education and health did add jobs, but not nearly enough to make up for the losses.

This time last year the state had $700 million available in it's unemployment trust fund. Today the state is $71 million away from having to borrow money from the federal government. That money will run out very soon.

It's a situation the state says they never imagined being in. "Our unemployment fund is just about depleted. We expect it to be completely empty by the end of October. At that point we'll be getting funds from the federal government in order to continue paying unemployment benefits," said Mae Worthey with the Nevada Department of Training, Education & Rehabilitation.

The state will then receive the first installment of a $240 million loan from the government to help with the growing unemployment benefits. According to Worthey, close to 110,000 Nevadans are receiving unemployment benefits. She says the state can apply for additional money every 90 days after the $240 million is used.

Worthey says if unemployment continues to skyrocket, the state could borrow as much as $1 billion from the federal government to help with benefits. "We were overly concerned. This time last year, when it was 7-percent, that was beginning to get a little high. We're in the worst-case scenario right now and we're operating under the concept that this is as bad as it can get," she said.

Worthey says this fall will be critical as they set the state's new employer tax rate. The money generated from it will not only have to replenish the money from the states' unemployment benefit fund, but it will also have to repay the government for the money borrowed by the state.

Worthey says people who are receiving unemployment should not worry though. One way or another, they will receive their benefits.

Eyewitness News has requested a statement from Governor Jim Gibbons on the unemployment numbers, but have not received a response.

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=11154761

this is why harry reid got the exclusion of nevada in the health care bill