RICHMOND—The Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement (DWDA) announced today that the number of initial unemployment insurance claims edged up in the latest filing week to 2,070 but remained slightly below typical pre-pandemic volumes experienced in 2019.

For the filing week ending December 30, seasonally unadjusted initial claims for unemployment insurance in Virginia were 2,070, which was an increase of 51 claimants from the previous week. Continued weeks claimed totaled 12,357, which was little changed from the previous week but an increase of thirty percent from the 9,545 continued claims from the comparable week last year. An industry was reported for ninety-three percent of continued claims. Of those, over half (58 percent) of continued claims were from administrative and support and waste management (1,767), professional, scientific, and technical services (1,665), manufacturing (1,178), health care and social assistance (1,052), and construction (986). Eligibility for benefits is determined on a weekly basis, and so not all weekly claims filed result in a benefit payment. This is because the initial claims numbers represent claim applications; claims are then reviewed for eligibility and legitimacy.

In the week ending December 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 202,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 218,000 to 220,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 268,020 in the week ending December 30, a decrease of 6,820 (or -2.5 percent) from the previous week. There were 278,487 initial claims in the comparable week in 2022.

Looking at preliminary data, most U.S. states reported decreases on a seasonally unadjusted basis. California’s preliminary weekly change (-7,572) was the largest decrease. Texas’s preliminary weekly change (-6,080) was the second largest decrease. Missouri’s preliminary weekly change (-2,551) was the third largest decrease. Florida’s preliminary weekly change (-1,583) was the fourth largest decrease. Virginia had the 20^th largest increase (+57).