
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 17, 1992                   TAG: 9203170041
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

VA. JOBLESS RATE ROSE, VEC SAYS

In a delayed report for January, the Virginia Employment Commission said the unemployment rate rose from 4 percent last year to 5.9 percent this year. The number of people employed rose, however, from 124,800 a year ago to 126,300 in January. And although active claims for unemployment benefits rose, the number of new claims dropped sharply from 940 a week last year and 665 in December to 493 in January.

Other items new to the Roanoke Valley economic index this week:

Norfolk Southern Corp. had a slight decrease in its coal loadings last week compared to a year ago.

The railroad loaded 20,008 cars in its Pocahontas coalfields last week. That was 1.5 percent fewer than the 20,305 cars during the same week of 1991, but 8.5 percent more than 18,436 coal cars loaded during the prior week.

Appalachian Power Co. sold 282,984,974 kilowatt hours of electricity in February, up from the 271,998,185 kilowatt hours used during February 1991, which was even warmer than last month's weather. It was down from January's report of 307,141,356 kilowatt hours when the temperatures were lower.

Roanoke Valley banks cleared checks worth $133,084,920 against each other last week. That was less than both $144,361,631 in a comparable week in 1991 and $160,974,792 the week before.

by CNB