Another 47,000 apply for unemployment in Kentucky as residents struggle to get paid
Another 47,036 people applied for unemployment in Kentucky last week, pushing the total number of people seeking benefits to more than 792,000 since mid-March, a federal report released Thursday shows.
The state had just over 2 million people in the civilian workforce in March, meaning more than 38 percent of them have since applied for unemployment payments.
Jobless numbers began to spike in mid-March as Gov. Andy Beshear ordered shutdowns or limitations on a range of businesses to try to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. Those orders helped hold down hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, but at a severe economic cost.
There were only 2,785 applications for unemployment in Kentucky in the seven-day period that ended March 14, but that shot up to 49,023 the next week and 113,149 the week after that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
New applications for unemployment payments peaked in early April and have trended down each week since — there were nearly 70,000 two weeks ago — but some recent reports have shown that jobless claims as a percentage of the labor force were higher in Kentucky than any other state.
The state’s unemployment insurance system has sputtered under the staggering influx of claims, with applicants unable to get answers despite repeated tries or being put on hold on the telephone for hours only to be cut off.
Jeff Borton, 43, who helped manage a restaurant in Lexington before getting laid off, said after some initial delay in being able to apply, he did get through and received his first check April 13, but the state payment and the $600 federal bonus later stopped and he’s had no income since April 30.
He has used up his savings and received financial help from his family to get by.
Borton hasn’t been able to get benefits re-started. At one point he gave up after being on hold for two hours and 10 minutes.
“When you can’t get in the system . . . at some point you’re like, ‘Oh my God, what else can I do?’ “ Borton said.
Celia Rodgers, a travel nurse who works in operating rooms around the country, filed an unemployment claim in Kentucky on April 15.
It hasn’t been approved and she’s had trouble resolving the problem, which apparently arose because she worked in multiple states in 2019.
Rodgers was on hold four hours one day before getting cut off. A month in, she talked with an unemployment staffer who said it could be two to four weeks to get the issue resolved.
She is staying with her sister in Corpus Christi, Texas, and calling every day to see if a recruiter at the company where she used to work has a job for her.
“I’m just burning through my savings,” Rodgers said.
JT Henderson, spokesman for the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, said Thursday that the state still has about 14,000 unresolved claims from March and 40,000 from April.
Those cases are complex, Henderson said, dealing with issues such as interstate claims, missing information, overpayment and protests from employers about paying.
However, the state is working to fix the problems, training staffers to be able to answer more complex questions and trying to improve the phone system.
The state had only 12 people handling unemployment phone lines when the wave of claims hit. They could handle 2,000 calls a day. The state has been getting 200,000 calls a day and has staffed up to be able to handle more than 150,000, Henderson said.
The cabinet is in the process of switching 250 people from work at other agencies to adjudicate unemployment claims, Henderson said.
The wave of unemployment claims also has raised questions about the state’s ability to make payments.
The state started the year with one of the worst-funded unemployment trust funds in the country, and has burned through cash since.
If the fund runs dry, the state will have to borrow money from the federal government to pay claims, as it did in the 2008-09 recession, when it borrowed more than $900 million.
It took until 2015 to repay the loans. State officials cut benefits and raised the tax on employers for several years to pay off the debt.
Henderson said Thursday that the state is monitoring the fund. If the unemployment situation continues on its current trajectory, officials anticipate having to borrow money early in the summer to continue making payments, he said.
“We will continue to work with our partners at the federal level to make sure Kentuckians get the help they need,” Henderson said.
In a separate report Thursday, the Kentucky Center for Statistics, part of the Education and Workforce Development, estimated Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 15.4 percent for April, up more than 10 percent from the preliminary March level.
The employment decreases don’t capture the full picture because many people on temporary layoffs were counted as still employed, Mike Clark, interim director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky, said in a news release.
Clark said every sector of the state’s economy saw a downturn, but the biggest losses were in fields hobbled by restrictions to reduce the spread of coronavirus, such as the leisure and hospitality and retail trade sectors.
Leisure and hospitality, which includes restaurants and lodging, lost 82,100 jobs in April, according to the report.
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 9:54 AM.
