Another 59,631 initial unemployment claims were filed with the Virginia Employment Commission this week, pushing the total number filed since the beginning of the Northam COVID-19 lockdown past the half-million mark.
A VEC press release tried to sell us on how that figure is down 12,857 from last week, but, we’re smarter than that.
The total number of initial claims filed since mid-March is now at 555,828.
The number of continued claims this week is 376,689, up 10.4 percent from a week ago.
For comparison, the continued claims figure for the first week of May 2019 was 18,478.
That’s a 1,938 percent increase, for those keeping score at home.
The number of continued claims represents 11.1 percent of the state’s private-sector payroll.
The unemployment rate in Virginia in February, the last complete month ahead of the implementation of the Northam COVID-19 lockdown, was 2.8 percent.
Story by Chris Graham
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