First-time, continued unemployment claims in Virginia dropped last week
Fewer Virginians applied for traditional state unemployment benefits or federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance last week, according to the latest data from the Virginia Employment Commission and U.S. Department of Labor.
Initial claims for traditional unemployment statewide fell nearly 19% to 11,890 during the week ending Dec. 26, compared with the previous week. The number of new claims for PUA, which provides benefits to eligible self-employed and “gig” contract workers, dropped 45% to 4,562 after a steep and sustained rise in the beginning of December.
Pandemic-related unemployment relief was set to expire at the end of the year, until it was extended an extra 11 weeks, through mid-March, by recent legislation.
The number of continued claims for traditional state benefits, those seeking unemployment benefits week after week, dropped 6% to 63,443 during the same week. The Virginia Employment Commission said that more than half of the claims were from workers in industries related to hotels and dining, health care, administrative support and retail. A year ago, before the pandemic, the weekly number of continued claims was 19,097, according to the agency.
Counting traditional and pandemic-related unemployment relief for the most recent week data was available ending Dec. 19, there were 411,269 Virginians collecting some form of jobless benefit.
Nationwide, there were 19.5 million people collecting some form of ongoing unemployment relief as of the week ending Dec. 12, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.