RICHMOND—The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced that the total number of initial claims filed from the first filing week of 2020 through the July 11, 2020 filing week surpassed one million initial claims.

For the filing week ending July 11, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 32,292. The latest claims figure was an increase of 467 claimants from the previous week. The weekly growth was an increase from the previous week, but 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 372,070, down 6,537 from the previous week, but 351,316 higher than the 20,754 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 11 filing week equaled 38% 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 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,300,000, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 4,000 from 1,314,000 to 1,310,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 1,503,892 in the week ending July 11, an increase of 108,811 (or 7.8 percent) from the previous week. There were 243,621 initial claims in the comparable week in 2019. Looking at preliminary data, most states reported increases while four states reported weekly increases greater than 10,000. These were in Florida (+62,467), Georgia (+31,176), California (+22,941), and Washington (+12,272). Virginia’s weekly change was the 15th largest increase among states.