LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Tuesday, March 11 marked five years since the World Health Organization declared the deadly COVID-19 virus a pandemic.
Roughly a week later on March 17, 2020 former Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak announced all non-essential businesses must shut down in order to prevent a spike in cases. About 300,000 Nevadans lost their jobs without knowing what was next. Many worked in the service industry.
The iconic Las Vegas Strip became a ghost town overnight.
The pandemic overwhelmed the state’s unemployment insurance offices with effects of rapid, high unemployment and a bogged-down system. Nevada’s Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation said the pandemic was unlike anything the department has ever seen since the unemployment program began almost 100 years ago.
Five years later, DETR upped its staff.
Employees now go through constant training. The department learned how big gig work was in Nevada. Gig or contract workers could not receive unemployment before the pandemic. Now, DETR says those workers are included in the system. More updates are also coming.
“The first phase of that has already gone live supporting the tax collections and employer services,” said DETR’s Chief Economist David Schmidt. “The benefits phase of that will be coming out this summer. I know the directors talked about that in some legislative hearings, but there’s a lot of effort being made to make sure that that process can be as smooth for people as possible.”
The department was already prepared with its Rapid Response Team which, Deputy Administrator for the Employment Security Division John Parell said, has been in existence since the Great Recession around 2008.
“We have a rapid response team that handles large scale layoffs if we need to,” Parell continued. “Recently, we had sorts like the Mirage converting into the Hard Rock. We had the Tropicana even before that so we’re able to handle large scale layoffs at any moment.”
There are about 20,000 federal employees in Nevada. While a number of them have lost their jobs in the last few weeks, DETR doesn’t expect to see the same rush of applications like it did in 2020.
Schmidt said many of those laid off employees have not filed for unemployment since many of them can’t yet due to receiving buyouts or severance packages. The department is still seeing a normal amount of unemployment insurance claims at around 140 per week. Still, DETR encourages any laid off federal employee to file a claim if they need benefits.
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