New Principal — “Hoang Nguyen, who has served as assistant principal of Kilmer Center since 2016, has been named the new principal of Kilmer Center, effective July 1. Nguyen began his career in FCPS as a special education teacher at Armstrong Elementary before moving to Marshall Road Elementary to serve as a crisis resource teacher where he remained for seven years.” [Fairfax County Public Schools]

Ramp Changes — “Starting around June 24, drivers on southbound Nutley Street in the Vienna area will use a new ramp and traffic signal to reach eastbound Interstate 66, Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) officials said.” [Inside NoVa]

Restaurants Team Up in Falls Church — “Open Kitchen D.C.’s gathering at Yayla Bistro back in March was just supposed to bring attention to another discrete treat buried within the region’s immigrant-owned restaurant scene, but it became one last gasp of normal life before the coronavirus pandemic hollowed out dining rooms across the nation.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Unemployment Problems — “Virginia has frozen unemployment benefits for more than 12,000 people who refused to return to work amid the ongoing public health crisis, the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) announced Friday.” [DCist]

Though the prospect of looking for a career might be daunting during a pandemic, a Falls Church-based group is hosting a virtual job fair this week to help people looking for jobs in STEM.

Women in Technology, a group that aims to get women “from the classroom to the board room,” invites anyone seeking a job in the science, technology, engineering or math fields to an online event on Thursday (June 25) where they can network with hiring managers at various companies.

Registration is free for job seekers, the site said. The event will be held from 4-7 p.m. and people can register online.

All ages and experience levels, including students, are welcome, the page said, adding there will be roughly 15 exhibitors at the event.

Throughout the year, the organization will also host various awards ceremonies and training opportunities for women in the STEM field, the website said.

“The great thing is we can reach more people with this being virtual and additionally, no traffic nor weather to affect the participation numbers,” WIT member Cristine Gollayan said. “Many have lost jobs due to COVID and we are hoping that this fair will assist those in the community.”

Photo courtesy Cristine Gollayan

COVID-19 Hospitalizations Slow Down in Virginia — “The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association reported only 959 coronavirus patients in state hospitals, the lowest number since the organization began providing data in early April. That was down from over 1,500 patients as recently as May 29 and a high of 1,625 on May 8.  Only 342 of those patients were in Northern Virginia, down from a high of 818 on April 30.” [Inside NoVa]

Calls to Rename Schools With Confederate Ties — “[The] Falls Church City’s Public School Board is faced with calls to change the names of one or both of its five schools that are currently named for men who were slaveholders at the time of the nation’s founding.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Support for Vienna Police — “Vienna Town Manager Mercury Payton usually kicks off Town Council work sessions by listing the evening’s agenda, but on June 8 he began with something from the heart: a statement addressing protests that recently have swept the nation after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Payton… signaled his support for Vienna police and said it was not the time to divest from law enforcement.” [Inside NoVa]

Unemployment Claims — “More than 100,000 Fairfax County residents have now filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic began in mid-March as the region’s job market continues to struggle to recover from business shutdowns.” [Inside NoVa]

(Updated 2:25 p.m.) After a surge of new jobless claims seeking unemployment benefits in April, Fairfax County is seeing a steady decline in initial unemployment claims.

Roughly 5,300 initial unemployment claims were filed in the county for the week of May 16 — a drop from 7,000 during the week of May 2, according to the latest data from the Virginia Employment Commission.

Meanwhile, continued unemployment claims — now at 47,000 for the week of May 16 — are rising less quickly in the county.

The county’s unemployment trends mirror statewide data.

More from the VEC:

For the filing week ending May 16, the figure for seasonally unadjusted initial claims in Virginia was 44,699. The latest claims figure was a decrease of 7,440 claimants from the previous week. The weekly total was the lowest since before the initial spike in unemployment insurance claims during the March 21 filing week.

For the most recent filing week, continued weeks claimed totaled 403,557, up 2.8% from the previous week and 385,380 higher than the 18,177 continued claims from the comparable week last year.

The continued claims total is mainly comprised of those recent initial claimants who continued to file for unemployment insurance benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus far, continued claims during the May 16 filing equaled 56% of all initial claims filed during the pandemic. This percentage was a significant drop-off from the previous week.

VEC’s preliminary data indicate that the pandemic has hurt the accommodation and food service industry the most.

Workers in that industry “continued to see the greatest percentage of continued claims for unemployment benefits” for the May 16 filing week, VEC said. “Moreover, claimants in that industry comprised over a quarter of pre-pandemic payroll employment.”

“Virginia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose 7.3 percentage points in April to 10.6 percent, which is 7.7 percentage points above the rate from a year ago,” according to VEC.

Data and image via Virginia Employment Commission

Fairfax County continues to have thousands of unemployment claims during the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 7,000 initial unemployment claims were filed in the county for the week of May 2, according to the latest data from the Virginia Employment Commission.

The latest data shows a slow decrease of claims in the county from a spike during the week of April 4. Fairfax County had the largest number of initial claims in Virginia for the May 2 filing week.

“Most areas reported declining numbers of claims compared to the previous week,” the VEC said. “Fairfax reported the largest over-the-week decrease (-2,097).”

Meanwhile, the number of continued claims keeps rising in Fairfax County from nearly 3,000 in late March to 30,000 in mid-April to more than 44,000 during the week of May 2.

The data shows a decrease in the number of claimants from the previous week for Virginia, but the VEC warns that the volume of initial claims “may not return to pre-pandemic levels for some time.”

More data on the trends for initial and continued claims in Virginia:

Data and image via Virginia Employment Commission

New Unemployment Numbers for Fairfax County — “With 629,185 county residents in the civilian workforce and 16,992 looking for jobs, the county’s unemployment rate of 2.6 percent was up from 2.1 percent in February, according to figures reported April 29 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.” [Inside NoVa]

Falls Church Senior Home Needs Masks — “The Kensington Falls Church is asking community members to sew surgical gowns for use by its staff.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Electric Bills Going Down — “Most Dominion Energy residential customers should see their bills drop in May, according to a Thursday news release from the company. The reduction will be around $6 per month for the ‘average residential customer,’ the release said.” [The Virginian-Pilot]

Create a Love Letter to Tysons — “Tysons Reporter is looking for video submissions of verbal ‘love letters’ to neighbors around the Tysons area.” [Tysons Reporter]

Small Business Loan Success — The Fairfax County Economic Authority interviewed the owner of Tysons-based Falcon Labs on what it was like getting a PPP loan. [FCEDA]

Two Tysons Corner Center restaurants are among the several businesses in the Tysons-area reporting layoffs due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The businesses recently filed notices under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act with the Virginia Employment Commission (VEC). The WARN Act requires businesses with 100 or more employees to provide at least 60 calendar days advance notice of a facility closing or layoffs affecting 50 or more employees, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Tysons Reporter looked at the 40 WARN notices filed in late March through today (April 23) in Northern Virginia.

Of those, eight involve businesses in located in Tysons, Vienna, Falls Church or McLean, totaling 1,084 layoffs:

• OneWeb (1785 Greensboro Station Place, Tower 3): 301 layoffs (due to COVID)
• Westwood Country Club (800 Maple Ave E.): 90 layoffs (COVID)
• Crescent Hotels & Resorts (8661 Leesburg Pike): 171 layoffs (COVID)
• Coastal Flats Tysons (7860-L Tysons Corner Center): 135 layoffs (COVID)
• Suit Supply Inc. (453 Brooms Street): 19 layoffs in McLean
• Earls Restaurant (Tysons Corner Center): 119 layoffs
• Case Architects and Remodelers (701 Park Avenue): 24 layoffs
• Fred’s Food Group (8051 Leesburg Pike): 225 layoffs

The businesses listed above claimed COVID-19 challenges caused the layoffs.

Inside NoVa published a list of the Northern Virginia businesses that filed WARN notices in March and April 2020.

Photo courtesy David Endres

Unemployment claims due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic continue to pour in.

Nearly 14,500 Fairfax County residents filed unemployment claims on the week of April 11, according to the latest unemployment data.

Overall, the number of statewide claims between March 21 and April 11 — 410,762 — is only 67,000 fewer than the average of all initial claims filed during the last three economic recessions, according to the Virginia Employment Commission. More than 121,000 Northern Virginia residents have filed claims since business closures began.

The latest claims figure, however, represents a decrease of 42,750 statewide claims and 6,848 countywide claims from the previous week, according to data from the commission.

The commission noted that the overall 29 percent decrease in the number of claims suggests that most people filed unemployment claims during the week of April 4.

Here’s more from the commission:

Initial claims measure emerging unemployment and the recent increase in initial claims in the Commonwealth is clearly attributable to impacts from the COVID-19 virus. The accommodation and food service industries have comprised the majority of these initial claims. Because of their prevalence in those and other affected industries like retail and health care, younger workers and female workers have been disproportionally impacted. The number of initial claims filed during the week ending April 11, 2020 was 45.6 times higher than the comparable 2019 week-an increase of 102,326 claims.

Despite a dip in the number of claims, the commission noted that claims still remain at historically high levels.

On the national level, the number of initial claims has totaled roughly 5.2 million, a decrease of 1.4 million from the previous week. During a comparable week in 2019, only 196,364 claims were filed countrywide.

Image via Virginia Employment Commission

The number of unemployment claims in Fairfax County skyrocketed last month.

Claims jumped from a mere 145 claims the week of March 14 to 4,345 the following week, according to information from the Virginia Employment Commission. As of March 28, that number ballooned to 12,109 claims.

The latest numbers offer a glimpse into the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as thousands of county residents lose their jobs.

The county’s unemployment insurance claims data are similar to the statewide picture. The number of claims filed during the week ending on March 28 was 110,397 higher than the comparable 2019 week.

The Virginia Employment Commission says initial claims measure the clear economic impact of the COVID-19 virus.

Although many areas are reporting layoffs in service-related industries like accommodation and food services, the commission notes that there are indications that layoffs “are bordering to affect a wider range of industries.”

Map via Virginia Employment Commission