Nevada's sluggish recovery | Jim Hartman Jim Hartman This opinion column was submitted by Jim Hartman, an attorney residing in Genoa. The Labor Department’s June jobs report on state unemployment found Nevada third from the bottom. The Nevada unemployment rate was unchanged from May when it was tied for the fourth-worst in the country. Unemployment in Nevada has remained stubbornly high all year — 8% in April and 8.1% in March. Nevada set a record for the highest unemployment rate ever recorded in any state’s history during the middle of the COVID lockdown — a record-breaking 29.5% in April 2020. That’s higher than in the Great Depression.