Virginia’s Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims for Week Ending July 31st

RICHMOND—The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced that the number of continued claims filed during the most recent filing week were less than two percent of all initial claims filed since Mid-March of 2020.

For the filing week ending July 31, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 6,029. The latest claims figure was a decrease of 149 claimants from the previous week. This brought the total number of claims filed since the March 21, 2020 filing week to 1,752,360, compared to the 477,600 average filed during the previous three economic recessions since 1990.

For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 31,960, which was a decrease of 1,643 claims from the previous week, and 90% lower than the 331,401 continued claims from the comparable week last year. Over half of claims that had a self-reported industry were in the health care and social assistance, administrative and waste services, accommodation and food services, and retail trade industries. The continued claims total is mainly comprised of those recent initial claimants who continued to file for unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For additional information on who is claiming unemployment insurance in Virginia, access the VEC’s U.I. claims data dashboard (https://www.vec.virginia.gov/ui-claims-dashboard) that is updated no later than the following Monday after the weekly claims press release.

Nationwide, in the week ending July 31, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was   385,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level. The previous week’s level was revised down by 1,000 from 400,000 to 399,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 323,763 in the week ending July 31, a decrease of 20,602 (or -6.0 percent) from the previous week. There were 983,780 initial claims in the comparable week in 2020. Looking at preliminary data, more states reported decreases on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Pennsylvania’s preliminary weekly change (-6,377) was the largest decrease. Texas’s preliminary weekly change (-4,454) was the second largest decrease. Florida’s preliminary weekly change (-3,821) was the third largest decrease. Michigan’s decline was the fourth largest increase (-3,553). Virginia’s increase (+277) was the twelfth largest increase.