First-time unemployment claims drop in Virginia
The number of Virginians to file first-time unemployment claims after being laid off or furloughed from traditional jobs dropped to 9,110 during the week ending Oct. 10, down by 1,733 claims compared to a week earlier. The Virginia Employment Commission reported that 142,220 people continue to collect traditional unemployment benefits statewide. A year ago, pre-pandemic, there were 16,866 Virginians continuing to collect benefits week to week.
The number of continued claims have been on a steady decline since mid-August.
The numbers don’t include recipients of federal pandemic unemployment relief, though, who had been self-employed or independent contractors, such as “gig” workers. Statistics kept by the Department of Labor lag the other figures by a few weeks. Counting nontraditional workers there were 469,687 people in Virginia making some kind of claim for jobless benefits as of the week ending Sept. 26.
Nationwide, first-time unemployment claims were up by 53,000 since the week before, to 898,000. As of Sept. 26, there were 25.3 million receiving some form of jobless benefit across the country, a figure that was down 215,270 from the prior week but still well above a year-ago count of 1.4 million people.
Virginians who are eligible for a new benefit, the Lost Wages Assistance program funded with Federal Emergency Management Agency money that is supposed to pay the unemployed up to $300 a week for a limited time, should expect to receive back payments dating back to early August in the next few days, according to the VEC. The state agency had originally expected the payments to be made Sept. 30 but a “programming error,” pushed the date to Oct. 15. The Lost Wages Assistance is intended to supplement jobless relief after the federal government’s weekly $600 support expired at the end of July.
The VEC’s site where unemployed Virginians can file first-time claims and maintain their continued claims, was shut down for much of Tuesday because of the same fiber optic cable damage this week that disrupted the last day residents could register to vote before the election. VEC warned unemployed Virginians that their benefit payments could be delayed up to two days because of the Columbus Day bank holiday as well as the outage.