Unemployment claims in Virginia remain virtually unchanged in week

The number of Virginians who found themselves newly unemployed last week remained flat from the previous week.

There were 12,155 initial claims filed for traditional state unemployment benefits last week, up slightly from 11,944 the week earlier, according to statistics from the Virginia Employment Commission.

The number of Virginians to seek new Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, available for workers in nontraditional roles including self-employment or contracted “gig economy” jobs, also rose slightly to 1,469 from 1,435, according to U.S. Department of Labor data.

The number of unemployed people who were continuing to make claims for traditional state benefits week to week dropped to 63,998 from 64,575 a week earlier.

That figure was still 41,795 higher than the number a year ago, pre-pandemic, according to the VEC.

Adding up state unemployment claims and those seeking pandemic-related relief, including Pandemic Extended Unemployment Compensation, which gives filers extra weeks of benefits if they had otherwise run out, there were at least 282,632 claims for some form of unemplo ment across Virginia as of Feb. 20, a drop of more than 15,000 from the week prior.

Nationwide, new unemployment claims were up 9,000 to 745,000 during the week ending Feb. 27, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

As of Feb. 13, there were 18 million Americans still collecting some form of unemployment benefit, be it traditional state benefits or pandemic-related relief, a decrease of more than 1 million from the week earlier.

A year ago, there were nearly 2.1 million people nationwide collecting unemployment.