Carson City unemployment rate rises slightly

The raw unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percent in November to just 4.1 percent statewide.

That’s the same as Carson City’s jobless rate, but Carson’s was up a tenth to 4.1 percent compared with October. The difference was in the capital’s Private Service Providing category that saw total employment dip from 16,800 to 16,700 over the course of the month. That category includes all service jobs outside the capital’s government employment.

When manufacturing and other goods producing industries are added in, Carson City has total employment of 31,100. Despite the increase in the unemployment rate, Carson was expected to lose 200 jobs during the month but instead remained steady. There are just 1,088 people seeking work in Carson City.

Churchill County is now at just 3.5 percent unemployment with 401 persons looking for work in a labor pool of 11,441.

Lyon County’s rate remains higher than the average with 1,119 jobless in a pool of 22,624. That translates to 4.9 percent.

Douglas County finished the month at 4.1 percent. There are 947 jobless in that county’s labor force of 23,131.

In November, Las Vegas added 1,900 jobs while the Reno reporting area added 1,200 jobs. The unemployment rate remained at just 3.3 percent in Reno-Sparks. In Las Vegas, the rate was 4.4 percent, unchanged from October.

Las Vegas has 40,011 seeking employment in a labor force of 1,121,872 while Reno-Sparks has just 8,400 jobless out of 258,900.

Overall, unemployment is down in all 17 Nevada counties compared to November of last year and below 4 percent in 11 of those counties.

“Nevada’s economic expansion remains strong as indicated by both statewide and more regional data,” said David Schmidt, chief economist for the Department of employment, Training and Rehabilitation.

He said the numbers show strong growth not only in the metropolitan reporting areas but rural Nevada as well.