Virginia’s labor force participation rate is, finally, ahead of where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Virginia Employment Commission reported on Friday that there were 4.53 million Virginians in the labor force in February, according to data crunched by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That number works out to 65.9 percent of the potential workforce, outpacing the 65.7 percent rate reported back in February 2020.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin, naturally, being a politician, is trying to take credit for this as being the result of his policies.
“Since Day 1, I have been laser-focused on more Virginians entering the workforce and today we reached new heights,” Youngkin said. “Our approach to make Virginia more affordable for families and local businesses is working and we are pressing forward on commonsense policies to make Virginia even more competitive and bring more people into the labor force.”
Maybe Youngkin’s policy reach extends beyond Virginia’s state lines. Virginia’s unemployment rate in February was 3.2 percent, a tick below the national rate, which is at 3.5 percent.
States blue and red are adding jobs as the economy, and the country and the world, continues to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even with the low unemployment rates, there are still a significant number of jobs open. Nationally, according to BLS data, there were 9.9 million job openings at the end of February, and in Virginia, the number of openings was at 321,000 at the end of February.
The politics aside, this is good news, considering where we’ve been the past three years.
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Chris Graham
