New data shows significant job loss in the Commonwealth
RICHMOND, VA – “Today’s employment report that shows significant job loss in Virginia and continued high unemployment levels reinforces just how far Virginia has to go before digging out of the deep jobs hole caused by the recession,” says Michael Cassidy, President of The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. According to today’s report, private and government payrolls in Virginia fell by 14,600 jobs in June.
- Virginia has lost 23 percent of the job gains made since February 2010.
- The state has made no real progress in job creation since the end of the recession all the way back in June 2009. At that time, Virginia’s total employment was 3.6 million and it remains at 3.6 million today.
- When compared to pre-recession levels in December 2007, total employment in Virginia is down over 120,000 jobs.
- Private businesses in Virginia currently employ fewer workers than they did in July 2004.
In addition, Virginia’s working age population has grown more than seven percent since 2005, so there are many more Virginians in need of jobs than at that time. The state’s current jobs shortfall has left hundreds of thousands of Virginia workers without a job more than two years after the official end of the recession, and has caused tens of thousands of Virginians to drop out of the labor force altogether.
“During this recession, Virginia lost more than twice as many jobs as during the deep recession of the early 1990s, and more than three times that of any other recession in Virginia’s history,” says Cassidy. “As a share of pre-recession employment, Virginia’s job losses during this recession were the worst since the 1940s.”
All this is bad news for the unemployed, two-fifths of whom have been searching for work for six months or longer. To make matters worse, the emergency federal program providing additional weeks of unemployment insurance to workers who have exhausted their regular benefits is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
“The health of Virginia’s economy is tied to jobs,” says Cassidy. “In the absence of robust job growth, people will continue to turn to public services for support and the state will continue to face serious fiscal challenges in providing those services that play a critical role in helping Virginians stay afloat. Unfortunately, in order to balance its budget in recent years, Virginia has cut back many of the services people rely on.”
