Va. jobless claims drop slightly last week

Nearly 175K Virginians remain unemployed

Published October 1, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Continued claims map for the week ending Sept. 26 courtesy Virginia Employment Commission. Green areas have 500 or fewer claims, yellow areas have between 501 and 6,000 claims and red areas have between 6,001 and 20,634 claims.

Virginia saw a small decrease in the number of initial jobless claims last week, the Virginia Employment Commission reported Thursday, but the number of initial claims filed from mid-March through the Sept. 26 filing week totaled 1.167 million, or 28.4% of pre-pandemic payroll employment.

For the week ending Sept. 26, 9,377 Virginians filed initial claims for unemployment, a decrease of 1,205 from the previous week, continuing the overall trend of lower claims volumes seen in recent months following April’s peak, according to the VEC.

Last week, 173,717 Virginians remained unemployed. This is a 7.7% decrease from the previous week, but 156,577 higher than the 17,140 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.

“[Continued claims] have declined at a consistent pace since mid-August — around 6.8% a week,” according to the VEC. The continued claims total is mainly comprised of those recent initial claimants who continued to file for unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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. 26:

Fairfax County, 578
Virginia Beach, 467
Richmond, 407
Norfolk, 378
Prince William County, 347
Portsmouth, 262
Henrico County, 237
Chesterfield County, 215
Newport News, 210
Chesapeake, 209

Nationwide, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for last week was 837,000, a decrease of 36,000 from the previous week’s revised level, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. There were 172,968 initial claims during the same week last year.