RICHMOND—The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced that the total number of initial claims filed in the twelve weeks from mid-March through the June 6, 2020 filing week totaled 822,300, nearly equaling all initial claims filed from 2015 to mid-March of this year.

For the filing week ending June 6, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 29,231. The latest claims figure was a decrease of 2,148 claimants from the previous week. The weekly total was the lowest since before the initial spike in unemployment insurance claims during the March 21 filing week.   

For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 396,056, down 2,355 from the previous week, but 376,977 higher than the 19,079 continued claims from the comparable week last year. 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. Continued claims during the June 6 filing week equaled 48% of all initial claims filed during the pandemic to this point. This percentage has trended downward in recent weeks.

Pandemic Unemployment claims accounted for 7,691 of the initial claims and 201,362 of the continued claims were Pandemic Unemployment continued claims during the most recent filing week. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a provision within the CARES Act, is a program that provides unemployment insurance benefits to those who are not covered by the regular/traditional Virginia state UI program. It provides payment to workers not traditionally eligible for unemployment benefits (self-employed, independent contractors, workers with limited work history, and others) who are unable to work as a direct result of the coronavirus public health emergency. Nationwide, for the week ending June 6, 42 states reported 705,676 initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. 

For additional information on who is claiming unemployment insurance in Virginia, access the VEC’s U.I. claims data dashboard (https://www.vec.virginia.gov/ui-claims-dashboard) that is updated no later than the following Monday after the weekly claims press release.

Nationwide, in the week ending June 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,542,000, a decrease of 355,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 20,000 from 1,877,000 to 1,897,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 1,537,122 in the week ending June 6, a decrease of 82,886 (or -5.1 percent) from the previous week. The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending June 6 were in California (+29,426), Massachusetts (+17,102), New York (+12,422), Maryland (+9,184), and Minnesota (+7,555), while the largest decreases were in Florida (-97,187), Texas (-16,941), and Georgia (-14,452).