RICHMOND—The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced that the total number of initial claims filed in the four months from mid-March through the July 4, 2020 filing week totaled 938,559, surpassing all initial claims filed from mid-September 2014 to mid-March of this year.

For the filing week ending July 4, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 31,825. The latest claims figure was a decrease of 130 claimants from the previous week. The weekly growth was flat from the previous week and well below the weekly peak in unemployment insurance claims reached during the April 4 filing week.   

For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 378,607, up 11,893 from the previous week, and 359,637 higher than the 18,970 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 July 4 filing week equaled 40% of all initial claims filed during the pandemic to this point. This percentage has leveled off in recent weeks.

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 July 4, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,314,000, a decrease of 99,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 14,000 from 1,427,000 to 1,413,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 1,399,699 in the week ending July 4, a decrease of 31,644 (or -2.2 percent) from the previous week. There were 231,995 initial claims in the comparable week in 2019. Most states reported decreases while five states reported weekly decreases greater than 10,000. These were in Indiana (-20,741), Florida (-17,300), Georgia (-13,895), Oklahoma (-10,843), and California (-10,239). Virginia’s weekly change was the 13th largest increase among states.