It's Halloween week -- time to get spooky! Who needs ghost stories when you have spine-tingling bars and trend lines? Here are five ghoulish charts about West Virginia in 2021 that will make your bones rattle and your blood curdle. At the beginning of the pandemic, West Virginia lost an unprecedented 101,000 jobs as total…
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This blog post, co-authored by the Keystone Research Center's executive director Stephen Herzenberg and the WVCBP’s senior policy analyst Sean O'Leary, was originally published by the ReImagine Appalachia coalition. West Virginia is at the center of the national political storm surrounding the need to invest in infrastructure, in families, and in combating climate change. Notably, West Virginia…
Earlier this week, it was reported that Senator Manchin was calling for a significant weakening of the enhanced Child Tax Credit (CTC) as part of his proposal to scale back the Build Back Better agenda. The enhanced CTC is one of the signature programs of the recovery agenda and is already making a significant impact…
Economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed in recent months, as a wave of new delta variant cases has left its mark on the job market. After adding an average of 889,000 jobs per month in May, June, and July, the nation added only 366,000 in August and only 194,000 in September, leaving the…
The Build Back Better Act, currently under consideration in Congress where West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin will be a deciding vote, would create bold, long-lasting change for West Virginia families, workers, and our state’s economy. The legislation contains landmark policies that will create millions of good jobs nationwide, while also addressing crucial needs in the…
Medicaid enrollment has increased, both nationally and in West Virginia, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent data show enrollment increased in the Mountain State from its pre-pandemic baseline of 489,000 individuals in February 2020 to 587,000 people in June 2021. The reasons for this are twofold: first, unprecedented pandemic-related job losses, which peaked at nearly 16…
The city of Huntington voted earlier this month to eliminate the city's Business and Occupation (B&O) tax for restaurants and retailers, which is expected to result in an annual revenue loss of $2 million. The city is hopeful that the revenue loss will be offset by increased local sales tax revenue. However, this is a…
The combination of tax changes in the Build Back Better bill recently approved by the House Ways and Means Committee would result in a tax cut for the average taxpayer in all income groups except the wealthiest 5 percent in West Virginia, according to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.…
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of people incarcerated in prisons who were age 55 or older increased 400% between 1993 and 2013 nationwide, with those age 55 or older making up 10 percent of the total prison population in 2013. West Virginia has seen a similar trend in recent years. According…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous challenges for West Virginia workers, from unsafe working conditions to unprecedented job losses. While some areas of West Virginia’s economy are recovering, the job market is far from pre-pandemic levels and employment gains have not been equally distributed. Further, increasing COVID-19 cases remain a threat to workers' health and…