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Between March 4 and April 18, unemployment claims in Virginia amounted to 10.9% of baseline jobs, according to this map issued by the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. That’s horrendous, but things could be worse. The U.S. average is 14.3% — and the Old Dominion’s job loss is less than half that of Michigan’s at 23.9%. (With the evaporation of 21.3% of Georgia’s jobs, you can better understand why the Governor Brian Kemp is taking big risks to roll back the shutdown and salvage the economy.)
VEDP President Stephen Moret provides this explanation for the Commonwealth’s less-dire circumstance: “Virginia is doing better than most other states in large part because we have a larger-than-average proportion of our total employment in professional jobs and federal government-related jobs that are less sensitive to social distancing policies.”
— JAB
