Va. new jobless claims decline to almost 1,000

Virginia’s new unemployment claims decreased by about 58% last week, the Virginia Employment Commission reported Thursday.

For the filing week ending Oct. 30, Virginians filed 1,088 new claims, a decrease of 1,482 claims from the week before. Continued claims totaled 31,564, a decrease of 13,276 from the previous week.

Compared to the same week last year, initial claims were about 89% lower than the 10,350 reported then. Continued claims were 68% lower than the 99,711 from the comparable week last year.

People receiving unemployment benefits through the VEC must file weekly unemployment claims in order to continue receiving benefits.

The majority of claimants who filed for benefits last week reported being in these industries: health care and social assistance; administrative and waste services; accommodation/food service; and retail.

The VEC has been under scrutiny this year for backlogs of claims and, most recently, for delaying the launch of its updated claims system from Oct. 1 to November. The VEC had announced that it would shut down its system Monday at 5 p.m. to launch the new system, but it has delayed the rollout again, pushing the implementation date to Nov. 8, WVEC’s 13News Now reported.

Nationwide, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims last week was 269,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised level and the lowest level for initial claims since the 256,000 reported on March 14, 2020. There were 737,503 initial claims in the comparable week in 2020.