New data from the New York City Economic Development Corporation shows that the city’s Black unemployment rate has dropped to 7.9 percent. Overall unemployment has dropped to 4.9 percent and Hispanic unemployment is at 6.7 percent.
State lawmakers must develop a plan for dealing with a potential multibillion-dollar budget hole that stems from misuse of COVID-era funds for unemployment benefits. But some still believe there could be room for tax cuts.
While reports of low unemployment and increasing wages are typically good news to the labor force, workers are still experiencing burnout, challenging hiring processes and concerns about caregiving, health and transportation.
A bill proposed by state Democrats would provide assistance to striking workers, despite unemployment benefits historically being restricted to those who lost their jobs through layoffs and corporate downsizing.
When bus service was eliminated for five years in Clayton County, in the Atlanta metro area, residents endured substantial increases in poverty and unemployment rates.
The state’s employment office will review the cases of 136,000 residents who collectively received $1.2 billion in “overpayments.” Only approximately 21,000 residents can expect to have their repayments waived.
The Pennsylvania county has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels for job availability despite the unemployment rate hitting record lows. Nationally there are 11 million open jobs but only 5.7 million unemployed workers.
Calls to the state’s Employment Security Department were answered just 12.5 percent of the time in December and problems left over from the pandemic continue to backlog the benefits system, delaying relief for residents.
Two million Californians lost unemployment benefits last September when pandemic-era programs ended a lifeline for many workers, specifically those who were less-educated, Black or over the age of 64.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a bipartisan agreement to fill the financial hole in the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund, which once stood at $4.5 billion, that was depleted by the pandemic.
In September, the state had nearly 1.03 million job openings, which amounts to almost 1.8 openings for every unemployed resident. Dallas-Fort Worth added 255,000 jobs in the last year, roughly 2.5 times the usual pace.
A report from the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development found that, for the last seven years, the state has performed “at or near the bottom” in employment growth, unemployment, net migration and GDP.
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office reported that the state’s antiquated unemployment system and “ad hoc workarounds” contributed to a loss of billions of dollars in improper payments.
There was concern earlier this year that the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund would diminish, but the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations reported this week that it has grown to $232 million.
A state audit found that the Workforce Development office paid nearly $125,000 to deceased people and another nearly $114,000 to ineligible prisoners in the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year.
As of July, approximately 440,000 Louisianans have voluntarily left their jobs this year, the highest total for the first seven months of a year since 2000. But experts say mobility signals a healthy economy, albeit a challenging one for employers.
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