The days of under-2-percent unemployment are gone for the moment in Arlington, as the county’s (and the region’s) jobless rate ticked higher in the first report of 2022.
With 148,168 county residents employed in the civilian workforce and 3,879 looking for jobs, Arlington’s non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of 2.6 percent was up from 1.9 percent a month before, according to figures reported March 18 by the Virginia Employment Commission.
It is not unusual for such large bumps upward after the holiday season. And the county’s 3-percent jobless rate was well below the 3.8-percent figure of January 2021, when the region was still coming out of the initial burst of the pandemic.
Arlington’s month-over-month increase was mirrored throughout the rest of Northern Virginia, where rates rose from 1.8 percent to 2.4 percent in Falls Church; from 2.2 percent to 2.7 percent in Loudoun County; from 2.3 percent to 2.9 percent in Fairfax County; from 2.3 percent to 3 percent in Alexandria; and from 2.7 percent to 3.3 percent in Prince William County.
For Northern Virginia in toto, the jobless rate of 3 percent for January was up from 2.3 percent in December, and represented just under 1.6 million in the civilian workforce and about 48,4000 looking for jobs.
Both the state jobless rate and the national figure rose from December to January, increasing from 2.7 percent to 3.4 percent statewide and from 3.7 percent to 4.4 percent nationally.
Among Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, the lowest jobless rates for the month were in Madison County at 2.3 percent; Falls Church; Arlington; and, at 2.7 percent each, Loudoun, Greene, Hanover, New Kent, Frederick and Rockingham counties.
At the other end of the spectrum, the highest unemployment rates for the month were reported in the cities of Petersburg (9%), Emporia (7.4%), Martinsville (6.5%) and Hopewell (6.4%).