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Labor market continues recovery in mid-October
Despite ongoing pandemic struggles, the labor market continued to improve during the week ending Oct. 17, but at a slower pace than at the start of the recovery, according to Virginia Commonwealth University and Arizona State University economists. Early October saw 68.4% of working age adults employed, a more than 8% increase compared with April, […]
Delegate plans to reintroduce quarantine pay bill next session
RICHMOND, Va. — Del. Elizabeth Guzmán, D-Woodbridge, said she is no stranger to the struggles of low-paying jobs. Guzmán said she immigrated to the United States from Peru as a single mother and worked multiple minimum wage jobs just to be able to pay rent and care for her daughter. Guzmán has a mission to […]
VCU study: Labor market continues slow recovery
The labor market continued to recover during the week ending Oct. 3, but at a slower pace than the start of the recovery, according to a report released Tuesday from economists at Virginia Commonwealth University and Arizona State University. “The latest results show that, since April, employment has recovered two-thirds of the way back to […]
Nearly 29K essential workers exposed to COVID-19
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) said Friday that, among its 1.3 million members, 238 front-line workers have died from COVID-19 and nearly 29,000 workers have been infected or exposed to the virus. UFCW represents more than 10,100 workers in Virginia’s grocery stores, meatpacking plants and other essential businesses. “With our country […]
Nearly 3M Americans filed jobless claims last week
More than 2.98 million people in the United States filed initial claims for unemployment last week, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics, marking a total of more than 36 million Americans who have filed jobless claims during the last eight weeks in the wake of the economic devastation brought on by the COVID-19pandemic. Last […]
Nearly 150,000 Virginians filed for unemployment last week
As the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis continues, 147,369 Virginians filed initial claims for unemployment last week, according to a news release Thursday afternoon from the Virginia Employment Commission. This brings Virginia’s total unemployment claims for the last three weeks to 306,143. It’s more than twice the number of the roughly 135,000 jobless claims […]
Va. jobless claims reach record high amid COVID-19 crisis
A record-breaking 46,885 Virginians filed for unemployment benefits last week amid the economic nosedive that has accompanied the COVID-19 crisis, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics released Thursday. The previous record for initial unemployment claims in Virginia was 25,133 in December 1989, according to a report released Thursday from the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis [&hell[...]
Could Democratic General Assembly repeal Va.’s right-to-work laws?
Buoyed by the Virginia legislature’s new Democratic majority, bills to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work laws have the greatest chance of making it to the governor’s desk in a generation, predict political scientists. “I think it absolutely will [get repealed], but it will be a big fight,” says Elsie Harper-Anderson, director of the Ph.D. program in public […]
Unemployment remained low for November in metro areas
Although not each individual city or county fell under a 5% unemployment rate in November 2019, Virginia’s 11 major metropolitan areas recorded unemployment rates below 3%, according to data released Friday by the Virginia Employment Commission. Statewide, the locality with the lowest unemployment was Arlington County, at 1.7%. Buchanan County in far Southwest Virginia had […]
Unionized GMU workers report wage increase
More than 200 Sodexo food service workers at Fairfax-based George Mason University will see an average 12% wage increase as a result of the workers’ first ratified union contract with New York-based labor union Service Employees International Union, Local 32BJ, the union announced Monday. Under the agreement that expires June 2024 for food service workers […]
