Unemployement Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Wood Flooring Company Acquires Two Closed Allegheny Wood Product Sawmills

Allegheny Wood Products announced it was closing its doors in February, laying off more than 900 employees. AHF Products, a wood flooring company, has agreed to acquire two sawmills from the defunct company.

Chief Operating Officer Jake Loftis said the acquisition will save an estimated 80 jobs that would have been lost last week.

“We are excited to add this capability to AHF and operate the mills at a capacity that will positively impact people and these two communities,” Loftis said.

Allegheny Wood Products was a supplier of lumber to the flooring company.

“It’s another key step to ensure AHF’s success now and in the future,” Lofits said.

The sawmills will now continue to supply lumber for AHF, a step the wood flooring company said was necessary for securing lumber supplies for current and future operations. The sawmills that will reopen are located in Greenbrier and Randolph counties.

AHF said West Virginia lumber could be used for other company locations in the future, although currently, it is not economical to do so.

Eastern hardwood has steeply declined in the last two decades, sitting at 40 percent of what it was in 2007.

West Virginia Legislature Ends Session With Pay Raises, Tax Cut And Failure Of Social Issue Bills

West Virginia’s Republican-dominated state Legislature on Saturday concluded a 60-day session marked by budget disputes and controversial social issue bills that advanced but ultimately didn’t go anywhere.

Lawmakers conferenced behind closed doors Saturday to reach an agreement on a budget just under $5 billion, bills that would cut unemployment benefits, a Social Security tax cut and a 5 percent raise for teachers and other state workers, among other legislation. Those proposals now head to the desk of Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who is expected to sign them.

The Social Security cut and pay raises were passed after the budget process was thrown into chaos this week when lawmakers learned Justice’s office was in negotiations with the federal government over a potential $465 million COVID-19 funding clawback.

Lawmakers debated several iterations of the budget before coming to a final decision, leaving out a number of priority items including a tax credit to make child care more affordable for families and money for a new agriculture lab at West Virginia State University.

Lawmakers intend to meet for a special session to review those items in May, when the situation with the U.S. Department of Education is clearer, the legislative leadership said.

Lawmakers additionally passed bills Saturday to allow the sale of raw milk with a warning label about the increased risk of foodborne illness and allow virtual public school students and private school students to opt out of mandatory vaccines.

Another successful bill would give public school teachers the option to teach intelligent design, the theory holding that certain features of life forms are so complex they can best be explained by an origin from an intelligent higher power, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent design is overwhelmingly regarded as a religious belief by the scientific community and not a scientific theory.

Social issues dominated most of the conversation during the session, but many did not cross the finish line.

As the clock approached a midnight Sunday deadline to pass bills, Democratic Del. Mike Pushkin dragged out discussion on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have been placed on the ballot to prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting in West Virginia elections, which is already illegal.

“I just don’t think it’s necessary to change the constitution that’s already in state code, something that isn’t taking place. It’s hard enough to get our citizens to vote,” Pushkin said, checking his watch.

“I would encourage all citizens to vote. Think of who you’re voting for when you cast that ballot,” said Pushkin, one of 11 Democrats in the 100-member House, just as time ran out.

Earlier in the session, the House of Delegates passed a bill to make schools, public libraries and museums criminally liable for distributing or displaying “obscene” materials to children. The Senate never took up that bill or failed bills passed by the House that would have restricted healthcare for transgender adolescents and allow teachers and other school staff with certain training to carry guns on school campuses.

The Senate passed a bill that would have made a video on fetal development produced by an anti-abortion group required viewing in public schools, but the measure failed to advance in the House.

Time also ran out Saturday for House lawmakers to vote on final passage of a “Women’s Bill of Rights,” which was almost sure to pass. Democrats labeled the proposal a dystopian bill that would give women no additional rights while enabling the GOP to suppress transgender people.

The legislation said “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” with respect to equality of the sexes. The proposed wording in state statutes and official public policies would define a person’s sex as determined at birth without allowing substitutions of gender equity terms. The bill also would establish that certain single-sex environments, such as athletics, locker rooms and bathrooms, are not discriminatory.

The bill was championed by Republican women in the Legislature, including Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, who said “radical feminists” have “sought a world in which men and women are treated exactly the same in every single circumstance, regardless of physical differences.”

“The Women’s Bill of Rights aims to halt this radical agenda,” she said, speaking on the floor in support of the legislation.

The unemployment bill, which was rushed through the legislative process in the final days of session after hours of debate, left some lawmakers confused, even those who chose to support it.

The bill would increase work search requirements for unemployed people receiving benefits and freeze the rates those individuals are paid at the current maximum of $622 a week, instead of a system adjusting with inflation. People also would be able to work part-time while receiving unemployment and searching for full-time work. Current average benefits are around $420 a week.

The bill was a compromise from an earlier version of the legislation that would have reduced the number of allowable weeks for unemployment benefits from 26 to 24 and started benefits at 70% of the recipient’s average weekly wage before losing work and reducing benefits over the amount of time the person is out of work without getting a new job.

Supporters say they were concerned about the long-term solvency of the state’s unemployment fund. But Del. Democratic Del. Shawn Fluharty said the bill sends a bad message.

“Here we are just year in and year out finding ways to chip away at who actually built this state: the blue collar worker,” Fluharty said.

The Social Security tax cut bill follows a law signed in 2019 that cut income tax on Social Security benefits over three years for the state’s lowest earners, defined as those making less than $100,000 filing jointly and $50,000 for a single person.

The proposal approved by the Legislature Saturday would eliminate the tax for everyone else, also over a three-year period. The tax would be cut by 35 percent this year, retroactive to Jan. 1, and 65 percent in 2025. The tax would be phased out completely by 2026.

WorkForce West Virginia; Duties And Direction

Randy Yohe spoke with Scott Adkins, acting commissioner of Workforce West Virginia, on the job seeking services the agency provides — and how they are working

In the “About Us” tab on the Workforce West Virginia website it says “Besides overseeing the state unemployment insurance program, the agency has a network of workforce development services to provide citizens and employers the opportunity to compete in today’s global economy.”

For our series “Help Wanted, Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force,” Randy Yohe spoke with Scott Adkins, acting commissioner of Workforce West Virginia, on the job seeking services the agency provides — and how they are working.

Yohe: The state continues to go full steam ahead on economic development with a variety of businesses and industries and corporations coming to West Virginia. What are your departments and divisions and Workforce West Virginia doing to develop the workforce needed to fill those positions?

Adkins: Well, here at Workforce, most folks think that we do just unemployment, but a huge component of the work and resources that we have is working with employers. We help employers recruit qualified applicants, virtual job fairs, on-site job fairs, we do upscaling retraining, we work with the Higher Education Policy Commission, DHHR, a bunch of different partners at the state level, to make sure we’re finding the right people for the right job.

Yohe: How do you gauge success there?

Adkins: Jobs, it’s all about jobs. At the end of the day, we take somebody who is unemployed or underemployed and put them in a position where they can succeed. At the same time, meeting whatever need that employer has, which is critical. I tell folks all the time at Workforce, the employers are our customers, and working from that angle, we’re able to help employers locate qualified workers

daily.

Yohe: And it covers a variety of skill sets?

Adkins: It does. If you think about the economy in West Virginia, it’s very diversified. A lot of folks think that we just do coal. Well, 40 years ago, we just did coal, not today. We are very diversified.

Yohe: I hear the term “childcare” tossed about when it comes to being able to keep and maintain and recruit and retain a workforce. How important is it right now, in 2023? Is that element to be incorporated, maybe from the state as well?

Adkins: Yes, it’s childcare, it’s transportation, and one of the things that we’re doing at Workforce right now, we try to expand opportunities in childcare. We’re working with our federal partners to create an apprenticeship, a sort of ‘learn to earn’ for folks who are interested in getting into childcare services.

Yohe: Does the orientation for your workers there, the people that are helping these people get jobs, morph a bit, according to what’s going on with the economy and the state?

Adkins: It does. We have job coaches that have to be familiar, not just with the careers that are coming in, but as you can imagine, they vary from region to region. So what we’re recruiting for, in helping to locate employees in the Eastern Panhandle, is gonna be a lot different than if we’re in Logan County, for example, looking for the same thing.

Yohe: Tourism Secretary Ruby has plans to fill an expected 20,000 new hospitality jobs over the next three years. How will Workforce West Virginia help fill those positions?

Adkins: One thing that we attempt to do at Workforce is to create career opportunities. If you look at the labor force participation rate in West Virginia at 16 to 24 (years old), we sort of lag behind the national average. We can work with that group of our population to show that, ‘Hey, there is a career opportunity, it’s not just a job.’ We try to change the dominant way of thinking for those 16 to 24-year-olds looking at hospitality and tourism as a career opportunity.

Yohe: It seems like there’s a great team effort among all the agencies and organizations within the state to make sure that you can get the best of what each one has, in order to get a better workforce. Am I right?

Adkins: Yes. I mean, I mentioned to you earlier that we do have more people working today. And I think that goes back to the concerted effort by the governor’s office to really drive home that every system or service in the state should be seamless. There should be one point of entry, whether you’re an employer or somebody seeking a service or a job seeker. There’s a big push, as you mentioned earlier, to get all these agencies working together. We’re not all siloed anymore. Historically, we sent you from shop to shop to shop. We don’t do that anymore. We tried to create a sort of self-service, one-stop operation across all state agencies, including folks at economic development.

——

This story is part of the series, “Help Wanted: Understanding West Virginia’s Labor Force.”

Nearly Half a Million In Ohio Valley Lose Enhanced Jobless Benefits

An analysis by the Ohio Valley ReSource showed that roughly 488,000 people in Ohio and West Virginia have lost supplemental unemployment payments after Republican governors there scrapped the federal unemployment benefit programs put in place during the pandemic.

Another 65,000 people in Kentucky eligible for the payments await a decision by the Democratic governor there who is facing mounting pressure as business owners claim that the expanded unemployment compensations have resulted in labor shortages.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hasn’t announced any intentions to drop the federal unemployment assistance, but he told Kentuckians that they will receive a $1,500 bonus if they go back to work by July 30.

As part of the massive federal effort to offer economic relief during the pandemic, Congress added funding to expand states’ ability to provide unemployment benefits to workers who wouldn’t otherwise qualify for the state unemployment insurance. Additionally, under the American Rescue Plan, the unemployed workers were receiving an extra $300 weekly benefit.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice opted out of the enhanced federal payments in the past two weeks.

“West Virginians have access to thousands of jobs right now. We need everyone back to work. Our small businesses and West Virginia’s economy depend on it,” Justice said in a May 14 press conference.

A day before that, DeWine said the expanded federal benefits had been a “lifeline” for many Americans at the height of the pandemic, but “This is no longer the case as we now have an abundant supply of vaccines.”

Nearly half a million workers in Ohio and West Virginia lost their $300 weekly payments, including 450,000 in Ohio and 38,000 in West Virginia, according to a Resource analysis of the labor department’s latest benefit claim filings data.

In addition to the enhanced weekly payments, West Virginia cut off all federally funded unemployment benefits, and as a result some 23,000 workers lost all unemployment benefits. As of June 5, about 65,000 workers in Kentucky were eligible to receive supplemental benefits, the Department of Labor data shows.

As of June 12, around 33,000 workers in the Ohio Valley made new applications for state unemployment benefits or to start a second or subsequent period of unemployment within a benefit year. In addition, about 25,000 made new claims for the federal pandemic benefits, with a majority of those coming in Kentucky.

Labor Debate

On Monday, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged Beshear to cut off the additional weekly unemployment payments, citing his discussions with the business owners in the commonwealth.

“There’s no question that we’d be in better shape if the governor had made a decision to discontinue the federal bonus as 25 other states have,” McConnell said.

But supporters of the programs have called the extra $300 weekly benefits a “vital lifeline” because it helps workers who’ve been laid off or can’t find work during the pandemic.

Kentucky union leaders and nonprofits, in a letter to Beshear in May, said that it would be premature for the state to end the benefits, and challenged the notion that people have stopped looking for work because of the federal programs.

“Some are falsely claiming that the extra $300 in benefits is keeping people from working, but in fact Kentuckians are returning to work in huge numbers,” they said, adding that the benefits also add money to local economies and boost demand for goods and services.

“Most of the complaints about an alleged labor shortage come from restaurants offering low wages, few benefits and little workplace flexibility,” the Kentucky coalition, in their letter to Beshear, said.

“Even with the limited appeal of restaurant work people are returning to those jobs in huge numbers.”

Unequal Recovery

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced state economies to shut down in March, workers lost jobs at a rate not seen since at least the 2007-08 financial crisis. The unemployment rates in the Ohio Valley peaked at 16% to 17% in all three Ohio Valley states in April 2020, surpassing the nationwide rate of 14.8%.

From their April 2020 peaks, however, the state labor markets have recovered by more than 10 percentage points in the Ohio Valley states, faster than the nationwide recovery of 9% –– with Kentucky seeing the fastest decline in unemployment rates in the region.

But the recovery hasn’t been uniform across all sectors of the economy as the hospitality and leisure sector that includes hotels and food services businesses reported the highest rate of job openings among all major sectors. While most sections of the economy are yet to reach their pre-pandemic workforce levels, hotels and restaurants, particularly, are the farthest away from the full recovery.

Because of the unequal impact of COVID-19 on people of color, the federal pandemic assistance helped families buy meals and pay bills. In the Ohio Valley, Black Americans file for unemployment benefit claims at a rate that is twice their population share in the region.

The leisure and hospitality industry, a major source of jobs for many people of color, is the lowest-paying employment sector in the Ohio Valley. A worker in this industry makes an average $380 a week, the lowest among all major industries and roughly equal to the amount of average weekly unemployment benefits.

Researchers at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, who studied the impact of the pandemic benefits, found that a longer duration of unemployment insurance benefits results in an increase in wages on re-employment.

“When people have resources to meet their basic needs while out of work, they can take the time they need to find the right job for them, rather than taking the first work opportunity that comes along,” the researchers said.

Other concerns include the lack of child care services keeping parents from rejoining the workforce, and the slowdown in vaccination rates creating economic uncertainty.

The Ohio Valley states would receive $2.3 billion in child care funding from the federal government that would be used to revive the child care industry that was upended by the pandemic forcing parents, mainly mothers, to quit jobs.

The Ohio Valley ReSource gets support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and our partner stations.

West Virginia Workforce Department Hit By April Data Breach

West Virginia’s unemployment agency said it was affected by a security breach several months ago.

WorkForce West Virginia took its system offline after learning of a “potential security incident” with the Mid Atlantic Career Consortium Employment Services database on April 13, the agency said Tuesday.

The agency did not say how many individuals’ personal information was possibly accessed. It said those who may have had their information exposed were notified. Files were not downloaded or altered in any way, the department said.

“Upon discovery, immediate steps were taken to secure the network and WorkForce immediately began an investigation,” the department said in a statement. “An experienced computer forensic firm was hired to help determine what happened and what information may have been accessed.”

Facing Unprecedented Unemployment Claims, How WorkForce West Virginia Is Adapting

Last year, WorkForce West Virginia was processing about 3,500 unemployment claims a month. This year, they’re averaging 40,000 a month due to shutdowns from the coronavirus pandemic.

The increased volume flooded the agency and they had to significantly adjust how they process claims, which included special provisions for people out of work because of the virus.

Acting WorkForce commissioner Scott Adkins spoke with West Virginia Public Broadcasting about the challenges his agency has had adjusting to the unexpected spike in unemployment claims and how they are addressing criticisms that people are not being paid quickly.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Lofton:How has WorkForce had to adjust to accommodate for the increased volume?

Adkins: Well, we’ve had to adjust on a bunch of different fronts. We’ve had to look at all the technology that we currently use. We’ve ramped that up significantly. We’ve added call center staff and additional call centers. We worked with Amazon on cell phone technology. We have a chatbot that’s supposed to be integrated into our system. We’re working with some external partners to provide resources. We’ve had to work with a vendor to stand up an independent system to process those Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims. So it’s been pretty significant.

Lofton: We’ve heard anecdotally that people are experiencing long wait times and that the pandemic unemployment assistance specifically is backed up. Is that true and what is contributing to some of the very long wait times?

Adkins: WorkForce West Virginia, like every other state waited several weeks after the Cares Act was signed by President Trump for guidance and rules for all the different programs that were covered in the Cares Act, including the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. So we were in the top 10 or 12 states getting the application piece up and running. Now with that, we weren’t able to test it as much as we would have liked to. Normally for us to stand up a system like that we’re looking at six months to a year to test it, retest it, to make sure that we don’t have issues.

There were two issues with the PUA system itself that occurred on May 12th and May 13th. There were a little over 5,000 people scheduled to be paid those days. And a couple things happened: The system itself took away digits from the folks who had debit cards, it added digits to the folks who had signed up for direct deposit. So basically nobody on the 13th was paid that should have been paid.

And so that created some significant issues for WorkForce. We had folks calling in and saying, “My dashboard on the PUA system says I’ve been paid, have I been paid?” And we would look at our system and work with our bank, which happens to be Key Bank and Key Bank said, “No, they’ve been paid, we sent the money to their accounts or to their to their banks,” but it took about two or three days to figure out that although the money was sent to those banks, and accounts, those accounts were wrong, those debit cards were wrong. And so for that money to come back, and for us to realize what was happening [took a couple days].

Keep in mind, there’s still quite a few folks who have significant issues on their claims. In other words, maybe they had wages in 2019. So we’d have to take a look at that or maybe they had multiple employers, we would have to take a look at that. Maybe they didn’t have enough documentation to support the fact they were self-employed, or they’re an independent contractor. And so there are still quite a few claims, I don’t have a number, but there’s still quite a few claims that we have to handle manually before those funds will be released.

Lofton: We’re also hearing from people who are having a hard time getting ahold of somebody on the phone to ask questions or get their questions through. Are you guys working to resolve those issues? And are you hearing that on your end as well?

Adkins: Well we are hearing that, that is the case. We have over 150 people answering the phones right now. We took on an external call center this week that’s added some capacity to that. The problem is the PUA program in and of itself is very complex. And so it’s not only do you have enough people to answer the phones, but it’s do you have enough people who understand unemployment, who understand the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, or the Cares Act to be able to take those calls.

And so I understand the frustration that people have, when they do get through that sometimes they get through to an agent that may or may not have that knowledge or that skill set to be able to answer that question. So we are working [on it], we’re very aware of it.

And I think as we go through this, and we get some of the kinks worked out, in the PUA system, the call volumes will decrease and the anxiety of folks waiting to get paid will decrease. And we’ve been communicating with them through the PUA portal as well, trying to give them updates, letting them know you know, what’s going on, what to expect next, and so forth.

Lofton: We’re also hearing from people who are eligible to return to work, their employers have now reopened. But they are concerned about returning for their own health but the health of those that they come in close contact with. What is the guidance for those who are on unemployment, their workplace reopens, but they’re not comfortable with going to work yet?

Adkins: There are several provisions that would allow folks to remain on unemployment if they meet that criteria. Now their employer can contest that criteria, contest the attestation that one of their employees meets that criteria. If that occurs, then what WorkForce will do is adjudicate those claims. And so that particular employee would have to provide medical documentation to support the rationale for not returning to work.

I can also tell you care that under the Cares Act, being afraid or fearful of catching COVID-19 is a disqualification for unemployment benefits. Now, the rub here, for employees and for businesses is even though they may be eligible for unemployment, the employment relationship between the employee and the employer can be terminated by the employer, which creates an employment law issue. And so there’s a lot to consider. If you’re unemployed and your employer calls you back to work, you need to probably go to work if you can. Otherwise, there could be some significant repercussions for you.

Lofton: Are most of the dollars flowing through WorkForce right now federal dollars, or is the state contributing and if the state is contributing, how long can the state keep up its contribution without economic stimulus?

Adkins: Yeah, if you’re under the Cares Act, if you’re eligible for regular unemployment, which is unemployment that would be paid for by the unemployment trust fund. In West Virginia, you have to apply for regular unemployment. You can’t be eligible for state employment and qualify for PUA, for example, in the Cares Act. The state trust fund right now, we have lost about 120 million dollars since the pandemic started. We have funds probably to get us through sometime in June that we have worked with our federal partners at the US [Department of Labor] as well. And we have funding secure to continue that. So there’s not a risk to the trust fund necessarily.

Lofton: So starting in June, there will be a federal grant that will basically bolster the state trust fund?

Adkins: Yeah, it’s not technically a grant. It’s a loan. It’s a no-interest loan. Now what WorkForce is hoping, like every other state in the union, that the federal government’s going to provide that either as a forgivable loan or provide resources to bolster the trust by moving forward. So right now it’s like a line of credit, we have access to a line of credit that would ensure the trust will remain solvent.

Lofton: And how long does that line of credit extend?

Adkins: Well, right now [it] extends through the end of this year. As the economy improves, you expect the unemployment rates to decrease. The rate for April came out on Tuesday of this week, and it was 15.2 percent. I expect that number to go up probably three or four more percentage points before the end of this month. So I’m not sure where that’s going to peak out, but it’s going to be substantially higher than where it is right now.

Lofton: And my understanding is we’re talking about unemployment rates that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression?

Adkins: Yeah, this is going to be the highest unemployment rate West Virginia has ever faced. And if you think about 20+ percent unemployment, you have to imagine that it’s going to take a while to get back. And even if the economy comes back, there’s going to be significant job [loss] and unfortunately, a lot of small businesses that don’t come back. And so that’s going to create a strain on state resources as well as federal and local resources.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.