Fact Sheets

February 27, 2024 by Sean O'Leary
Indexing Unemployment Benefits Would Harm Small, Rural Counties in West Virginia

Overview During the 2024 legislative session, the West Virginia Senate introduced bills that would make major changes to the state’s unemployment insurance system, to the detriment of workers. These changes include dramatically reducing the number of weeks of unemployment benefits available to the state’s unemployed workers. SB 840, would tie the maximum weeks of eligibility…

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January 18, 2024 by Rhonda Rogombe
Policies That Further Restrict SNAP Harm Families, Retailers, and the Charitable Sector

Overview Read the full fact sheet here. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is the most powerful anti-hunger tool in the United States. It is highly responsive to economic downturns, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, where unemployment peaked at over 15 percent in West Virginia.[1] SNAP already…

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January 9, 2024 by Sean O'Leary
West Virginia’s Job Growth Not Broadly Shared

While, as a state, West Virginia has fully recovered all jobs lost during the pandemic, that job recovery has not been felt evenly across all counties. Recent economic development announcements have been limited to a handful of counties, mostly on the state's border. As of November 2023, 18 counties are still below their pre-pandemic jobs…

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January 2, 2024 by Sara Whitaker
Who do Lawmakers Listen to About West Virginia Jails?

In March 2022, Governor Jim Justice announced that he had directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to investigate Southern Regional Jail (SRJ). In the days leading up to the governor’s announcement, media reports described horrifying conditions at the Raleigh County jail: filthy and broken accommodations, people sleeping on wet floors, violence against incarcerated people…

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August 24, 2023 by Kelly Allen
Research Preview: Hope Scholarship Sends Public Taxpayer Dollars Out of State and to Unaccredited Schools

West Virginia lawmakers passed the Hope Scholarship, at the time one of the broadest school voucher programs in the nation, in 2021. Voucher programs like the Hope Scholarship, referred to as Education Savings Accounts, divert taxpayer funding from the public education system to unaccountable, sometimes unaccredited, private schools and education service providers. With no public…

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