Virginia’s Latest Unemployment Insurance Weekly Initial Claims at 2,497; Continued Claims at 15,546

Virginia Continued Weeks Claimed

A person who has already filed an initial claim and who has experienced a week of unemployment files a continued claim    to claim benefits for that week of unemployment. On a weekly basis, continued claims reflect a good approximation of the current number of insured unemployed workers filing for UI benefits, and are a good indicator of labor market conditions. While continued claims are not a leading indicator, they provide confirming evidence of the direction of the economy.

The color-coded map below shows the distribution of this week’s continued claims for Virginia’s counties and cities.

Yellow represents low numbers, while progressively darker shades transitioning from yellow to green and dark green  signify increasing numbers of continued claims. The legend located at the bottom provides the color spectrum and its corresponding count of continued claims.

Initial Claims for All States

 

In the week ending May 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 231,000, an increase of 22,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised up by 1,000 from 208,000 to 209,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 209,324 in the week ending May 4, an increase of 19,690 (or 10.4 percent) from the previous week. The seasonal factors had expected a decrease of 626 (or 0.3 percent) from the previous week. There were 203,898 initial claims in the comparable week in 2023. 

Initial State Claims (5 largest decreases) (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
State	Initial Claims (this week)	Initial Claims (prior week)	Change
Iowa	1,915	3,001	-1,086
New Hampshire	381	894	-513
Florida	5,680	5,989	-309
Connecticut	2,579	2,830	-251
South Carolina	1,863	2,107	-244

Initial State Claims (5 largest increases) (Not Seasonally Adjusted)
State	Initial Claims (this week)	Initial Claims (prior week)	Change
New York	23,373	13,125	10,248
California	44,142	39,944	4,198
Indiana	4,783	2,344	2,439
Illinois	10,674	8,671	2,003
Texas	15,573	14,387	1,186

All States Initial Weeks Claimed

An initial claim is a claim filed by an unemployed individual after a separation from an employer. The count of U.S. initial claims for unemployment insurance is a leading economic indicator because it is an indication of emerging labor market conditions in the country.

Below is a color-coded map illustrating the percentage change in initial claims from last week to this week across all states nationwide, derived from the latest U.S Department of Labor Weekly Claims News Release (https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf). Green denotes a reduction in continued claims from last week, thus showing improvement, with progressively darker shades of green signifying greater improvement. Purple denotes an increase in continued claims from last week,  thus showing deterioration, with progressively darker shades of purple signifying greater deterioration. Very light green, purple or white indicates minimal change from last week. The legend at the bottom provides the color spectrum along with its corresponding percentage value.