A new federal report shows that West Virginia and Kentucky saw the country’s sharpest declines in personal income last quarter. Alana Watson explains the losses are tied to the pandemic and declining support from the coronavirus relief act.
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says personal income decreased in every state in the third quarter of 2020, which includes the months of July, August, and September. West Virginia and Kentucky saw the largest declines.
Income in West Virginia declined by almost 30 percent and Kentucky by 24 percent. Ohio’s personal income declined by 16 percent.
Personal income had increased in the second quarter from April to June due to the government’s economic support during partial COVID-19 shutdowns.
Matthew von Kerczek is an economist for the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He says the reduced COVID-19 aid from the CARES Act was one of the leading contributors to the decline in the third quarter.
“In the second quarter, the CARES act boosted personal income by about 3 trillion dollars. In the third quarter it’s just over 1 trillion dollars,” Kerczek said.
Von Kerczek says there was a partial rebound in earnings in the third quarter due to the gradual reopening of the economy.
The final 4th quarter report will be released in March 2021.
During the coronavirus pandemic, both fathers and mothers stepped up to help more with childcare. However, overall, mothers still continue to do 15 hours more housework and childcare. That’s according to a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group, which asked parents in the United States and Europe how the pandemic has affected how they balance work and family responsibilities.
Sixty percent of parents said they had no outside help in caring for or educating their children during the pandemic. On average, parents are putting in nearly 30 hours of additional labor per week.
Fathers’ roles at home in the U.S. have changed, but only slightly, in the past 40 years. Only 2 percent of fathers in the 1970s stayed home full time with the kids. By 2013, the percentage of full-time fathers had only grown to 4 percent, according to a study by the nonpartisan think tank the Pew Research Center.
On average, women with children under the age of 6 in the U.S. typically put in twice as much time caring for children than men, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Historically, the coal industry has shaped the economic boom and bust cycle in our region. But major changes to the industry have created new strains on our economic system here in Appalachia, and some wonder if a radical fix is needed to support the poor or underemployed middle class. Some Democrats in Congress have pointed to an idea, called Basic Universal Income, as one possible solution. Lovey Cooper, contributing editor with 100 Days in Appalachia, co-wrote an article about Basic Universal Income, or UBI, and about what supporters and critics of this proposed economic program have to say.
The job market in Appalachia isn’t great. Issues like mechanization are partly to blame, and analysts say it’s only expected to get worse.
“Depending on the study you cite, automation will replace anywhere from 9 to 50 percent of American jobs,” Leah Hamilton, assistant professor of social work at Appalachian State University and a supporter of UBI, said. “Even if it’s only nine percent, we know that those in lower-skilled jobs will be affected the most.”
So robots, essentially, are going to be replacing a lot of jobs over the next generation. Some Democrats in Congress are suggesting the answer to the problem is Universal Basic Income.
UBI—a federally-provided, no-strings-attached monthly payment to all U.S. adults, similar to Social Security—has been proposed as a potential solution to rampant poverty since Richard Nixon’s presidency. More recently, it has emerged as part of the Green New Deal, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York. Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal found initial support from at least 40 members of Congress.
Economic theories aimed at giving low-income communities more cash-based aid are often modeled on urban impact. But there is growing interest in examining how UBI—a policy that has drawn bipartisan curiosity and support—could be a potential answer for generations of poverty in rural America as well.
In Appalachia, experts believe that by further reducing the cost of living through supplemental payments, the UBI could help mitigate the rampant issues of scarce job opportunities and fleeting businesses and could encourage greater regional equality for the region with the rest of the nation. To read the full report by 100 Days in Appalachia about UBI, click here.
This story was co-published with Spotlight for Poverty and Opportunity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan site featuring commentaries and original journalism about poverty and mobility.
Lovey Cooper is a contributing editor with 100 Days in Appalachia and engagement editor at Scalawag magazine. Her work focuses on policy, justice, and the intersection of politics and culture in the South and Appalachia.
Liz Price studies Feminist Studies and Appalachian regional policy at Ohio State University where she is working on a manuscript on the racial logics of the American opioid crisis.
According to a press release from the Appalachian Regional Commission, $22.8 million is being awarded to 33 projects in the Appalachian region.
The funding is part of the ARC’s POWER program, an initiative that awards federal funding for coal impacted communities to help them create jobs.
Some of the projects that received awards are in West Virginia, including farming projects, like the West Virginia Food & Farm Coalition and Grow Ohio Valley in Wheeling.
Executive Director and founder of Grow Ohio Valley, Danny Swan, said his organization wants to improve the economy of coal-impacted communities throughout the Northern Panhandle by increasing market opportunities for farmers throughout the region.
“Wheeling eats 700 million dollars worth of food a year. If Wheeling shifted ten percent of its eating toward products that were grown in and around Wheeling, it would inject 35 million dollars into the economy via local food development.”
Other projects receiving funding include Marshall University Research Corporation, which is using the money for a Craft Beer and Spirit Trail project, and the New River Gorge Trail Alliance, to expand an outdoor tourism project centered around outdoor hiking trails.
According to the ARC, the 33 awards are projected to create or retain nearly 1,000 jobs, some of which are designated to go to people in addiction recovery who are trying to reenter the workforce.
Derek Akal, 22, grew up in the famed coalfields of Harlan County, Kentucky. He’s a bit over six feet tall, he’s black, and he has an athlete’s build. Neat curls of black hair rise off the top of his head, and on his chin, he keeps a closely-trimmed mustache and goatee.
I first interviewed Derek in October 2016. At that time, he said he was trying to become a Kentucky state trooper, but also making plans to move to Texas to work on an oil rig.
By November, Derek still had one plan to find work near home, and another plan to move West, but both plans had changed. Now, he was following a lead on a lineman job that would have him climbing utility poles and making plans to move to California after his birthday, in March.
Plans Through the Whole Alphabet
For Derek, changing plans is part of the plan. When I asked Derek what would be the first thing he’d want people to hear from him in this story, this is what he told me:
“It’s okay if you want to stay. It’s also okay if you want to leave. But if you’re going to leave, then make sure you always have more than three plans. Plan A, plan B, plan C— you’ve got to have through the whole alphabet!”
Derek has had a lots of ideas about what he could do at home, and he’s told me he would stay home if his mom or grandma asked him to, but the plans Derek has gotten most excited about all involve him moving somewhere far away.
“That’s where I might have a future. I know I’m young, but I’m ready to get out there and do a lot.”
Plan A: Football Dreams
Derek was raised primarily by his granddad, his grandma and his mom.
“Because his father wasn’t around. His grandfather was his father,” said his mother, Katina Akal.
When Derek was a junior in high school, his granddad passed away.
Credit courtesy Derek Akal
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Derek Akal with his grandmother and mom
His grandma and his mom said they noticed that Derek became more withdrawn. He started to focus more intensely on a goal his granddad had pushed him toward— excelling at sports to hopefully earn a college scholarship.
You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive
His senior year, after a summer dedicated to working out, Derek became a football star. “I got defensive player of the year. I got four district championships, and I got three regional championships. You know, I dedicated all that [to] my granddad.”
Harlan County High School’s football field is called Coal Miner’s Memorial Stadium. It has huge metal bleachers on two sides, and a giant modern scoreboard behind the end zone. It’s in a beautiful spot, a patch of flat land that was blasted out of the wooded hillsides that surround it.
When Derek and I visited in November, the leaves were at their most colorful. A gym class was playing flag football, and the sound of gunshots told us someone was out hunting nearby.
Derek started to get nostalgic, remembering how he used to feel back when he played here as a Harlan County Black Bear. He told me about times his blood and tears fell onto the turf. He told me about walking onto the field before games, in front of a roaring crowd that would sing along to the country hit “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”
Credit Benny Becker/ WMMT
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Derek Akal
In the deep dark hills of Eastern Kentucky
That’s the place where I trace my bloodline
And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone
You’ll never leave Harlan alive
“I’m not a big fan of country music,”Derek said, “but you know it got me pumped up like crazy. I love it.”
The last game of the season, Derek got hurt. Some of his teammates had the opponent’s running back held up, so Derek charged in to help make the tackle.
“As soon as I hit him, my head cocked all the way back, and I felt the back of my head touch my back. I broke my neck— I broke my C1 and my C2… If I hadn’t gotten hurt I’d be playing for a bowl game right now with a D1 college.”
Going Away to College
Derek was in a neck brace for four months, but he was still getting college scholarships to play more football. He accepted a scholarship to attend the University of the Cumberlands, in Williamsburg Kentucky. It’s only two hours from Derek’s home in Harlan County, but the college draws students from all across the country.
There, Derek sometimes felt like an outsider. In Williamsburg, he stood out for the way he talked— for his Harlan county accent.
Many of his classmates were surprised that someone who looks like him, a clean-cut and fashionably dressed black man, could be from rural Kentucky.
“They’d be like, ‘oh where [are] you from?
And I’d say, ‘Two hours away in the mountains.’
And first thing, they be like, ‘You serious? You don’t even look like you’re from Kentucky! You look like you’re from Georgia or Florida or New York City, city places like that.’
I’m sitting here like, ‘No man, I’m from Harlan County Kentucky!’”
That wasn’t the only discomfort Derek felt with being a young black man in Williamsburg. Derek said his feelings about the town soured after he and a friend had their car searched by police twice in one week.
“We gave [the police] the license and everything, and he was like, ‘oh, I thought you guys had stuff on y’all.’ I can’t read minds, but seeing a couple of black guys together, I feel like we got profiled right there.”
Things on the football field weren’t going great either. Two games into the season, Derek’s neck started bother him again. He became afraid that playing more football could make his spinal injury become more severe. “I didn’t want to play no more,” Derek said, “because, you know, I want to be able to walk.”
Derek was homesick, and he didn’t want to get deeper in student debt, so he decided to drop out and move back home.
What Now?
Derek’s mom says that when he got home, he was afraid that she and his grandma would be disappointed in him, but she understood where he was coming from. ” “I said,‘look, college is not for everybody. Do what you feel like you want to do.’”
“Go do something,” his grandma urged him. She said, she worries there aren’t jobs in Lynch; she would like him to get out if it means he can find work. “Go get yourself a job. I don’t want him to stick around here, walking these streets.”
Credit Benny Becker/ WMMT
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Derek Akal
Derek’s mother agrees. “I’d rather for him to go find work and be a productive member of society. I’d rather him do that than stay here and be miserable, because I can see it already. I want him to go somewhere that he can be happy.”
Derek’s mommas, as he calls them, instilled in him a drive to get out of Appalachia and find opportunity elsewhere. “I got it in my head that I can make it out, and be something for myself, by myself.”
Derek’s not the first person in his family to have that thought. In the next chapter of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay, we’re going to hear more about how the hunt for better work and a better life has affected Derek’s family and community for generations.
This story was produced by WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley ReSource, which is made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson. We’ll hear the next part of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay story next week, here on Inside Appalachia.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry toured a modern and relatively clean coal-fired power plant in West Virginia in order to tout the benefits of coal in a competitive energy market. But the secretary’s comments generated some controversy.
The coal industry has been feeling the heat from natural gas as electric utilities switch to that cleaner, cheaper fuel. When asked how coal can compete, Perry said it was a simple matter of economics.
“Here’s a little economics lesson, that supply and demand,” Perry said. “You put the supply out there and the demand will follow that.”
That left some economists puzzled: Simply supplying a product does not West Virginia University economics professor Brian Lego guessed that Perry was likely talking about the 19th century theory known asSay’s Law but not quite getting it right.
“The description that the secretary provided was very…” Lego struggled for a polite way to put it, “I don’t want to use the word inadequate, but incomplete at least.”
Perry’s comment caught the attention of energy market watchers and the gaffe was soontrending on Twitter.
Credit Glynis Board
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Longview Power faced years of community opposition and bankruptcy.
Perry’s visit toLongview Powerand a nearby coal mine was intended to highlight energy infrastructure needs and what Perry calls “clean coal” technology.
According to Longview, their plant is the cleanest coal-burning power plant in North America, with some of the lowest emissions. However, it does not capture greenhouse gas emissions of CO2, something generally thought of as part of“clean coal” technology.
The company that owns the plant has had its own economic troubles,emerging from bankruptcy just two years ago. Officials say the facility’s high efficiency helps make it competitive in a tough market.
