Va. jobless rate falls to 6.3 percent

RICHMOND

Virginia's job market improved last month as the number of Virginians out of work declined.

The Virginia Employment Commission also noted weekly declines in the number of laid-off people making their first claims for unemployment benefits compared with last year.

The declines during several weeks of October were the first such drops in more than a year, VEC chief economist William F. Mezger said Friday.

''It means the number of people being laid off is coming down," he said.

However, several Hampton Roads companies announced closures and job cuts this week, including Verizon Communications, U.S. Foodservice Inc. and Advanced Services Inc. Their cuts will total nearly 500 local positions.

Also this week, Alcoa Howmet laid off 250 employees when it closed its Hamton gas turbine plant.

Nationally, initial claims for unemployment benefits still tracked above 2008 levels through October, but the mid-November total was down.

Virginia's unemployment rate for October fell to 6.3 percent from 6.5 percent in September, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The bureau also reported that new data show the September rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than it originally estimated.

The unemployment rate was 4.2 percent last October.

The number of unemployed Virginians fell to 261,700 in October from 270,100 in September, the bureau said.

The total number of people at work or actively looking for work declined by about 1,300 from September to October, which suggests several thousand Virginians found work, far more than may have simply stopped looking.

Mezger said Virginia has benefited from federal stimulus funds and the expansion of military bases. Expansion at the bases, including Fort Lee, and federal government hiring of private firms for a variety of services, particularly for information technology, boosted the state economy, he said.

While Virginia's unemployment situation has been much better than the nation as a whole since the recession began in late 2007, "the gap between Virginia and the national average is widening," Mezger said.

The national unemployment rate went up in October to above10 percent for the first time in 26 years.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, in which the data are revised to reflect 10-year-averages for monthly changes in employment, Virginia's unemployment rate held steady a 6.6 percent. The national rate, on a seasonally adjusted basis, rose to 10.2 percent in October from 9.8 percent in September.

Pilot writer Jaedda Armstrong contributed to this report.