Virginia’s unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a point in May to 4.5%. That’s well below the national rate of 5.8%.
Virginia had the third lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, along with Kentucky, among the Southeast states. The only states with lower unemployment were Alabama and Georgia. The private sector added nearly 257,000 since May of 2020 when the unemployment rate was 8.5%. Most of those new jobs are in the leisure and hospitality industry.