The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has some good news for Virginia — its unemployment rate is 2.8%.
"Virginia really remains hot, hot, hot."
That's John Provo at Virginia Tech's Center for Economic & Community Engagement, and he says the last year has seen a huge increase.
"We've got 76,000 more people working. Jobs are up in all sectors of the economy, including 5,000 more jobs in manufacturing and 8,000 more in professional services," explains Provo. "So, that actually suggests that most parts of the state are participating in this continued hot labor market, and we're filling the jobs."
Leslie Stratton at Virginia Commonwealth University says the unemployment rate in the United States is now lower than it's been in decades.
"There is inflation. But in a number of months, the weekly wages have risen faster than the inflation rate," Stratton says. "That doesn't mean that people aren't still upset about prices being higher, and people should realize prices are not going to actually fall back to where they were before."
Prices are not rising as rapidly as they were before, she says, and the Federal Reserve is hoping to slow down the increase even more.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
