The American Jobs Plan, which Congress will consider this year, outlines a bold set of initiatives to invest in America’s infrastructure and renewable energy while ensuring there will be well-paying jobs for generations to come, including for West Virginia workers who have been displaced by the decline of coal. However, these investments will fail to…
Economic Security
For Immediate Release: June 21, 2021Contact: Kelly Allen or 304-612-4180 Charleston, WV - The White House declared today “Child Tax Credit Awareness Day” to raise knowledge and awareness about the transformative improvements to the Child Tax Credit (CTC) approved as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The CTC provides much-needed relief to families, boosting opportunity and improving…
Mountain State Spotlight, Beckley Register-Herald - Shepherdstown Mayor Jim Auxer is proud to point out that, even throughout the pandemic’s worst months and the challenges they presented, his town managed to maintain its services and keep on all its government workers. Read the full article. Auxer estimates Shepherdstown lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in…
West Virginia MetroNews - More than 8,000 state residents receiving unemployment benefits under a pandemic-related program are in their last week of receiving those benefits. Read the full article. Gov. Jim Justice announced last month that the additional $300 weekly benefit would end on June 19. WorkForce West Virginia acting Commissioner Scott Adkins said Tuesday independent…
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) will allocate more than $1.355 billion in federal relief funds to the state of West Virginia to address the ongoing economic and health impacts of the pandemic. Recently, members of legislative leadership have called for a special session to fulfill the mandate set forth in House Bill 2014, which provides for…
Yahoo News, Sports Grind Entertainment, The Baltimore Post, One News Page, Toplinks, - On Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki made that rare assertion on which Democrats and Republicans can both agree. “West Virginia doesn’t usually get this much attention,” she said. Read the full article. Psaki wasn’t talking about the state’s steep demographic…
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides crucial nutrition assistance to low-income individuals and households whose incomes are at or below 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Level ($16,744/annually for an individual and $28,548/annually for a household of three). Along with unemployment insurance, SNAP is the most responsive aid program providing assistance during economic downturns.…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - Over the past year, the pandemic and our nation’s response have highlighted some of the flaws in our antiquated federal-state unemployment insurance system. Read the full op-ed. The CARES Act addressed some of these well-recognized problems, particularly through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides unemployment benefits to people who do…
Southerly, Energy News Network, Daily Yonder - Nina McCoy has been waiting for an answer to a question for 40 years: What happens to a coal county and the people who live in it when all the coal is gone? She still has the 1981 articles from when both the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal posed the same question.…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - On this West Virginia Morning, people who have been incarcerated, once they get out, often struggle to find a job and a place to live. Those struggles often drive them back to crime, but re-entry councils are helping to address that problem. Also, in this show, Kanawha County has the most…