As COVID-19 does a number on our economy, the latest weekly unemployment insurance weekly claims numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor are, yet again, not good – to put it mildly. For the U.S., we’re talking about another 3.8 million Americans filing initial unemployment benefit claims last week, bringing the total to “more than 30 million…in six weeks.” Ugh. And here in Virginia, add another 74,043 unemployment claims, on top of 82,729 the previous week. Note that, according to the Virginia Employment Commission, the total for the five weeks ending March 21, March 28, April 4, April 11, and April 18 was 493,501. Add in another 74,043 this week, and it adds up to 567,544 over the past six weeks of this disaster…and with still no end in sight. Double ugh.
