| Share of Federal Employment by County | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data as of 2nd Quarter 2024, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages | ||||||
| Total | Federal | Federal Share | National Rank | County Weekly Wage | Federal Weekly Wage | |
| Churchill County Nevada | 8,819 | 573 | 6.49% | 153 | $1,129 | $1,213 |
| Mineral County Nevada | 1,164 | 59 | 5.04% | 224 | $1,080 | $1,496 |
| Lincoln County Nevada | 1,346 | 50 | 3.71% | 327 | $912 | $1,479 |
| White Pine County Nevada | 4,306 | 154 | 3.57% | 342 | $1,438 | $1,526 |
| Humboldt County Nevada | 7,819 | 162 | 2.08% | 622 | $1,318 | $1,604 |
| Carson City Nevada | 31,658 | 637 | 2.01% | 649 | $1,241 | $1,955 |
| Lander County Nevada | 3,614 | 70 | 1.93% | 677 | $1,688 | $1,582 |
| Washoe County Nevada | 239,217 | 4,183 | 1.75% | 756 | $1,274 | $1,801 |
| Elko County Nevada | 22,176 | 374 | 1.69% | 805 | $1,180 | $1,769 |
| Esmeralda County Nevada | 272 | 4 | 1.47% | 962 | $1,145 | $499 |
| Clark County Nevada | 1,116,863 | 15,032 | 1.35% | 1,071 | $1,205 | $1,703 |
| Nye County Nevada | 13,971 | 127 | 0.91% | 1,689 | $1,237 | $1,323 |
| Pershing County Nevada | 1,955 | 15 | 0.77% | 2,016 | $1,484 | $1,457 |
| Douglas County Nevada | 20,471 | 113 | 0.55% | 2,629 | $1,276 | $1,655 |
| Lyon County Nevada | 13,865 | 74 | 0.54% | 2,674 | $1,118 | $1,190 |
| Eureka County Nevada | 4,443 | 10 | 0.22% | 3,114 | $2,076 | $1,204 |
| Storey County Nevada | 19,129 | 2 | 0.01% | 3,145 | $1,681 | $1,931 |
| Red highlighted cells where federal share of employment exceeds national average (1.94% of employment) | ||||||
| Blue highlighted cells where federal share of employment exceeds national median (0.97% of employment) | ||||||
Summary of Federal Employment in Nevada
This report uses data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Department of Labor to look at both overall levels of federal employment in Nevada and to look at claims for unemployment insurance from federal workers in Nevada, as well as providing resources to individuals about such claims.
The largest federal departments with workers in Nevada as of the second quarter of 2024 are:
Department of Veterans Affairs (6,349)
US Postal Service (4,881)
Department of Defense (2,877)
Department of the Interior (2,124)
Homeland Security (2,091)
Concentration of Federal Employment by County
Data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages allows us to look at the counties in Nevada with the largest concentrations of federal workers. This does not include active duty military personnel, but does include civilian employment at military bases, so Churchill County, home of the Naval Air Station Fallon and Mineral County, home of the Hawthorne Army Depot have above-average concentrations of federal employees, each among the 250 counties in the nation with the highest concentrations of federal workers.
In all, 11 of Nevada’s 17 counties have a higher concentration of federal workers than the typical county, and 6 of these have higher concentrations than the overall national share of federal employment to all workers.
Unemployment Insurance Activity for Federal Workers
Unemployment insurance is available to federal workers as it is to other unemployed workers. These claims are handled by a parallel program, Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE). Tracking these claims can give us an idea about layoffs and unemployment for former federal workers. However, if an individual has wages from both private and federal sources, these claims would be tracked under the regular UI program, not UCFE, so UCFE claims should be considered only a subset of all potential federal claims.
Initial claims reflect an application for benefits, and are most closely tied to layoffs or job loss, while weekly claims represent the process of filing for benefits for a particular week, and are most closely tied to the number of people unemployed for a particular week. The report week is the week in which a claim is reported, usually for claims that happened in the prior week, reflecting labor market activity the week before that. So the data for report week 2/22/2025 reflects claims filed in the week from 2/9/25 to 2/15/25, which reflects unemployment or job separations in the week prior to 2/9/2025.
Data source: https://oui.doleta.gov/unemploy/csv/ar539.csv
| UCFE Claims in Nevada | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Report Week | Jan-04 | Jan-11 | Jan-18 | Jan-25 | Feb-01 | Feb-08 | Feb-15 | Feb-22 | Mar-01 |
| Initial | 4 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| Weekly | 115 | 131 | 129 | 126 | 131 | 128 | 132 | 142 | 125 |
Information about Unemployment Claims for Federal Workers
For information about unemployment compensation for federal workers, please refer to the UCFE Fact Sheet provided by the U.S. Department of Labor.
For information about how various states interpret eligibility rules about eligibility for benefits based on cause of separation, please refer to the Comparison of State Unemployment Insurance Laws, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, in particular the section on Nonmonetary Elibibility, which outlines provisions surrounding involuntary separations beginning on page 5-10. This adds a general note on eligibility as follows: Historical Note: In determining what constitutes misconduct, many states rely on the definition established in the 1941 Wisconsin Supreme Court Case, Boynton Cab Co. v. Neubeck, 237 Wis. 249, 296 N.W. 636 (1941): “Misconduct . . . is limited to conduct evincing such willful or wanton disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of his employee, or in carelessness or negligence of such degree as to manifest an equal culpability, wrongful intent or evil design, or to show an intentional and substantial disregard of the employer’s interest or of the employee’s duties and obligations to his employer.”
To file for unemployment benefits in Nevada, please visit https://ui.nv.gov/.