Va. initial jobless claims slightly drop last week

Number of ongoing claims down 50% from May 16 peak

Published September 17, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Continued claims map for the week ending Sept. 5 courtesy Virginia Employment Commission. Green areas have 500 or fewer claims, yellow areas have between 501 and 8,000 claims and red areas have between 8,001 and 25,192 claims.

Virginia saw a slight decrease in the number of initial jobless claims last week, the Virginia Employment Commission reported Thursday, but the number of ongoing claims has dropped to 50% from the May 16 filing week peak, when 403,557 Virginians filed for unemployment.

For the week ending Sept. 12, 10,100 Virginians filed initial claims for unemployment, a decrease of 1,035 from the previous week. And 201,616 people in Virginia remained unemployed last week. This is a 7.3% decrease from the previous week, but 183,773 higher than the 17,843 continued claims from the same period last year. People receiving unemployment benefits through the VEC must file weekly unemployment claims in order to continue receiving benefits.

The regions of the state that have been most impacted continue to be Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads.

Below are the top 10 localities, listed by number of initial unemployment claims, for the week ending Sept. 12:

Fairfax County, 607
Virginia Beach, 444
Norfolk, 467
Richmond, 430
Prince William County, 400
Chesterfield County, 264
Henrico County, 263
Newport News, 247
Portsmouth, 222
Loudoun County, 215

Nationwide, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for last week was 860,000, a decrease of 33,000 from the previous week’s revised level, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. There were 173,134 initial claims during the same week last year.