Dogwood: “Virginia workers could be in even more trouble this year unless better policies are put in place to address the affordability crisis”

VIRGINIA – As Winsome Earle-Sears backs Donald Trump’s attacks on Virginia jobs and the Commonwealth’s economy, unemployment rose for the 7th month in a row and is expected to continue to rise. With leaders like Sears cheering on the attacks instead of standing up to protect Virginia jobs, experts are concerned that an affordability crisis in Virginia will only continue. Levi Goren, the research director at The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, told Dogwood:  
 
“The status quo is not good enough for a lot of Virginia families. [...] There’s a lot of folks struggling to make ends meet.”
 
What Virginians are reading: 
 
Dogwood: Virginia unemployment rate projected to rise in 2025, 2026

• Economic pain could be avoided with better federal and state policies.
• Virginia workers could be in even more trouble this year unless better policies are put in place to address the affordability crisis.
• The jobs under the most pressure are government jobs, which Weldon Cooper called “a cornerstone of Virginia’s labor market,” and professional, scientific, and technical services jobs that are shrinking for the first time in over a decade.
• Some federal workers are not employed but still getting severance pay. There are worries about what will happen after September when those payments stop and these workers officially file for unemployment.
• It would help Virginia if the federal cuts to jobs and contracts stopped, and at the state level there are many things that can be done to help workers and the economy, Goren [Levi Goren, the research director at The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis]  said.
• Goren expects there will be legislation to address Virginia’s affordability crisis in the upcoming General Assembly session, [..]. 
• “The status quo is not good enough for a lot of Virginia families,” Goren said. “There’s a lot of folks struggling to make ends meet.”

Axios Richmond: Virginia jobless rate rises for 7th month

• Virginia's unemployment rate notched up again last month, the seventh month in a row it's increased.
• By the numbers: Virginia's unemployment rate hit 3.6% in July, up from 3.5% in June, per preliminary and seasonally adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics data out last week. A year ago, Virginia's rate was 2.8%.
• Threat level: A quarter of unemployed workers have been out of a job for 27 weeks (that's six months) or longer, per a new analysis of government data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. That's the highest since February 2022.

The Progress-Index: Unemployment claims in Virginia increased last week

• Initial filings for unemployment benefits in Virginia rose last week compared with the week prior, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday.
• New jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased to 3,145 in the week ending August 16, up from 2,624 the week before, the Labor Department said.

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