New reports show delayed job recovery, modestly improved mental health funding

Jobs in Virginia "continue to disappear" even though the state's unemployment rate remains lower than the national average.

That's one of the conclusions in a new study conducted in the wake of recent recession by the left-leaning Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis.

Other key findings in the report:

• More unemployed workers looked for work for six months or longer before finding a job. In 2010, the share of unemployed workers looking for a job for 27 weeks or longer soared to more than one in three unemployed workers, nearly double the highest recorded rate since before the Great Recession.

• In 2010, Virginia's underemployment rate was at its highest level in at least 15 years, rising at a rate faster than that of the United States as a whole. Underemployment rose seven percent in 2010 on top of a 61-percent jump in 2009 and a 23-percent increase in 2008.

• Between 1980 and 2010, the drop in the employment rates for Virginians with low levels of education was almost twice the drop for their peers in the United States as a whole, pointing to a labor market that is splintering faster in Virginia than in the U.S.

"What this latest analysis shows is that the devastation caused by the Great Recession among Virginians with low-levels of education comes on top of a 30-year erosion of employment for these workers, even as highly educated Virginians have fared better than their peers elsewhere," said institute president Michael Cassidy.

A nationwide survey by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, meanwhile, shows Virginia slightly boosted mental health spending in the current fiscal year, an $8 million (or two-tenths of one percent) increase over the previous year.

That modest bump comes after years of funding reductions, nearly $38 million in the previous three years, according to NAMI's Virginia chapter. 

“We applaud the governor and state legislature for this year’s increase,” said NAMI state executive director, Mira Signer, adding that there are thousands of Virginians who lack access to mental health services. “It’s not enough, but it does represent a small step forward.”

-- Julian Walker

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