New unemployment claims filed with the Virginia Employment Commission continue to trend down as the state climbs out of the economic mess created by the public health response to COVID-19.
For the filing week ending Aug. 8, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 13,265. The latest claims figure was a decrease of 10,653 claimants from the previous week, and resulted in a decline of 69 percent over the last two filing weeks.
At the depth of the downturn, there were 147,369 initial unemployment claims filed with VEC in the week ending April 4.
For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 264,410, down 66,991 from the previous week, but 244,425 higher than the 19,985 continued claims from the comparable week last year.
Continued claims have trended downward over the last three months and accelerated their decline during the most recent filing week.
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.
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