Virginia has 182,000 reasons to want to get back to a pre-COVID environment.
That’s the number of jobs that the Virginia Employment Commission estimates were missing from the local Old Dominion’s economy in March compared to a year before, the last month before the pandemic upended daily life across the state.
The 182,000 lost jobs represent a decline of 4.5 percent of the total statewide workforce from a year ago. The bulk of the loss – 145,200 jobs – came in the private sector, which now lags March 2020 by 4.5 percent. The biggest decline, at the height of the pandemic and today, has come in the leisure/hospitality industry sector, which remains down nearly 19 percent.
Public-sector jobs are off 5New percent from a year before, with all of those drops coming at the state and local levels. Federal-government employment is up.
Northern Virginia’s job loss of 70,800 represents 39 percent of the statewide total, and is off 4.6 percent from a year ago.
Richmond’s job loss totals 38,900, a drop of 5.6 percent, while in the Hampton Roads area, the decline of 32,500 jobs represented a drop of 4.1 percent.
All 10 metro areas that include Virginia localities had year-over-year employment loss in March.
