UVA’s Experts Paint Rosy Picture Of Va. Economy. Dems Cling To Gloom.
by Steve Haner
In April, economic prognosticators at the University of Virginia published a prediction that Virginia would lose 32,000 jobs during 2025. The Al Gore-like jeremiad was promptly adopted by Virginia Democrats who used it in speeches and advertising to claim Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and his chosen successor, Winsome Earle-Sears, were mismanaging the economy.
As the negative ad blitz was reaching its peak near Labor Day, the same deep thinkers at the same once-trusted Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service issued a follow up that quietly adjusted that prediction downward, this time asserting the state’s end of year employment numbers would reflect an 11,700 decrease from the end of 2024. The Democrats kept using the more worrisome but discredited larger number.
A new report just popped up and now the prediction is that Virginia will lose just 1,800 jobs this calendar year. The trendline alone makes that also shaky. To try to keep you from noticing, the authors introduced and overused the word “stagnation” to describe the situation Virginia faces as all states absorb the headwinds from the new tariff regime and federal spending reductions. The new headline is their claim the state’s unemployment level will reach 4.8% next year, a jump from the 4.6% they predicted in the August report.
That gave the Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s campaign and the Democratic mudslingers at Blue Virginia enough ammunition to issue another condemnation of Youngkin’s economic leadership, with plenty of side references to President Trump’s tariff regime and reductions in the federal workforce. But given that the initial predicted job losses were nothing but an in-kind campaign contribution masquerading as research, this unemployment projection should also be taken with skepticism.
The University of Virginia and its Weldon Cooper Center have damaged their brand. Yes, Virginia is more exposed than many other states to the turmoil in the federal government. But the Youngkin Administration has been working as hard as any state administration in recent memory to recruit new businesses and new jobs to our Commonwealth, with notable success. It can be argued the tariff push is contributing to the good news, particularly with all the announcements regarding pharmaceutical manufacturing.
If you read the full Weldon Cooper October report, the main bullets are largely positive and most were ignored by Spanberger and Blue Virginia:
Virginia’s labor market showed some resilience during 2025
Still, the unemployment rate in Virginia has increased during 2025 and will reach 4.1% by the end of the year and 4.8% in 2026, the highest rate since 2021
Virginia’s GDP will remain in positive territory
Inflation in Virginia is below the U.S. average
Likewise, in the text (emphasis added):
“The monthly job reports reinforce the idea of stagnation in the labor market. Newly updated numbers show that in the first six months of 2025, the U.S. economy created 802,000 jobs, while Virginia created 11,800 new jobs— reversing the decline of 8,400 jobs observed in January and February 2025. According to preliminary numbers, in July and August, the Commonwealth observed an increase of approximately 10,500 jobs, performing far better than the average of the US economy. However, the fourth quarter is traditionally a period when the Commonwealth’s economy tends to slow down.
“Recent positive results indicate federal workforce reductions have had less impact on the Virginia economy than originally anticipated, likely because not all of the layoffs have materialized.”
Translation: We got it wrong. We’re backpedaling like a circus bear riding a unicycle. Funny, that is how it has worked for 40 years with dire predictions related to climate and weather, heat waves, ice free Arctic seas and hurricanes. Somehow those horrible outcomes fail to materialize. The economy is just like the weather, there have always been ups and downs, pleasant periods and bad storms. Weldon Cooper has more credibility when it is reporting and analyzing data and not reading tea leaves.
Republished with permission from Bacon’s Rebellion.
