Unemployment benefits filing nearly doubled last week

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits nearly doubled last week.

A total of more than 6.6 million people.

Here in Kentucky, more than 112,000 residents filed for those benefits. The prior week, around 49,000 thousand Kentuckians filed.

“A lot of individuals are under stress right now. We know that filing for unemployment can be a daunting process. But we are here to help with that process,” said the president and CEO of the workforce development board, Robert Boone.

Staff members from the south-central workforce development board have been working remotely to answer hundreds of phone calls every day.

Businesses are under tremendous financial pressure right now, according to the president and CEO of the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, Ron Bunch.

“For some of them because of their impacted business whether it was affected by the government decision in response to the pandemic or business decisions, they are having to layoff or temporary furlough employees,” said Bunch.

Bunch believes many employers see their workers as family wanting nothing more than to get back to business as usual.

“A number of them are laying off only temporarily, which is good, with a plan to call them back and so they are dealing with that reverberation really back through the economy as well,” said Bunch.

While these times are financially tough for a lot of individuals and businesses, Boone said there is a bright side.

“Once everything gets back to normal, we will be much better prepared for delivering these kinds of services to people from a distance and virtually. I think that’s one really good thing that will come out of this from a process standpoint,” said Boone.

In order to get through this temporary time of unemployment stress for so many people, the Workforce Development Board is adhering to social distancing orders by switching to remote communications.

“We’ve made his pivot to provide services on a virtual level and from a distance and that has been difficult,” said Boone.

The workforce development board has also implemented new online tools for jobseekers and employers, such as webinars and a jobs portal at southcentralworkforce.com.