New jobless aid requests rose last week in Virginia
The number of people filing new unemployment claims in Virginia last week rose by 482 to 10,582 compared with the week before as the fall from a peak of 147,369 new claims in midApril remains bumpy. Those who are still collecting unemployment benefits after making that initial claim dropped to 188,195, though, falling for the fifth straight week, according to data released Thursday by the Virginia Employment Commission.
Nationwide, the number rose by 4,000 to 870,000 for initial unemployment claims and the prior week was adjusted up by 6,000.
Those numbers don’t represent the entire unemployment picture in Virginia and elsewhere. They capture only individuals in traditional employment covered by the usual state benefit system who were laid off or furloughed. It doesn’t include the independent contractors or “gig” workers in untraditional employment who have been eligible to receive benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and those whose traditional benefits ran out but were extended under the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.
While statistics kept by the federal government lag the Virginia Employment commission’s figures by a few weeks, there were 3,499 initial claims and 205,254 continued claims for PUA benefits in the state as of the week ending Aug. 29 and 52,800 claims for extended PEUC benefits. Individuals can’t receive benefits from more than one program at a time.
Adding those figures to the number of people who sought traditional unemployment benefits as of the week of Aug. 29, there were 14,945 new jobless claims across Virginia and 507,799 people receiving continued unemployment benefits, including any extension after their traditional benefits ran out. That total number, including traditional and nontraditional workers, appears to have peaked at 915,395 in Virginia the week ending July18.
As of August, there were 4.3 million people in Virginia’s civilian labor force. The preliminary unemployment rate in the state as of last month was 6.1%.
“While the small increase in initial claims is unwelcome news, the overall trend over the last two months has been a relatively steady decline in initial unemployment claims, from nearly 40,000 a week in mid-July to 10,000 in midSeptember,” said Dominique Johnson, research associate at the Old Dominion University Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy. “Over the last five weeks, the number of Virginians receiving some form of benefits has also declined by an average of 15,000 each week. We do, however, expect to see the number of Virginians receiving extended benefits under the federal PEUC programs to rise in the coming weeks as some workers are still unable to find work and have begun to exhaust their benefits for the year.”