RICHMOND—The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced that the number of initial claims filed during the most recent filing week reverted to recent months’ trend after the prior weeks’ lower volumes.

For the filing week ending April 24, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 37,356. The latest claims figure was an increase of 23,605 claimants from the previous week. This brought the total number of claims filed since the March 21, 2020 filing week to 1,638,836, compared to the 477,600 average filed during the previous three economic recessions since 1990.

For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 54,281, which was a decline of 992 claims from the previous week, and 287,014 lower than the 341,295 continued claims from the comparable week last year. Over half of claims that had a self-reported industry were in the accommodation and food services, administrative and waste services, retail trade, and health care and social assistance industries. 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.

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 April 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 553,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 19,000 from 547,000 to 566,000. The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled  575,350 in the week ending April 24, a decrease of 9,486 (or -1.6 percent) from the previous week. There were 3,468,261 initial claims in the comparable week in 2020. Looking at preliminary data, most states reported decreases on a seasonally unadjusted basis. Texas’s preliminary weekly change (-19,848) was the largest decrease. Wisconsin’s preliminary weekly change (-7,888) was the second largest decrease. Georgia’s preliminary weekly change (-6,809) was the third largest decrease. Tennessee’s preliminary weekly change (-5,198) was the fourth largest decrease. Virginia’s preliminary weekly change (+29,218) was the largest increase among states. This comes as a rebound from recent filing week’s steep decline in initial claims.