Three months into his new job, Kentucky Labor Cabinet Secretary Jamie Link paid a virtual visit into Wednesday’s West Kentucky Workforce Board meeting — detailing, among many things, his many concerns about the state of unemployment in the Commonwealth.
In the immediacy, Link said the top two priorities of the office included getting the people of Kentucky back to work, and processing just and overdue unemployment insurance claims to citizens.
He didn’t exactly call this current state of affairs a “labor shortage,” but did note that hundreds of businesses statewide are hiring — some desperately.
This has created some competitive wages offered, due to market supply and demand, and Link said Kentucky’s Labor Cabinet is continuing to research how to meet the needs of both workers and employers.
As for unemployment insurance, Link called those concerns an unfortunate “perfect storm” — in which a dilapidated and antiquated computing system, an ensuing global pandemic, a massive worldwide layoff, a massive distribution of federal relief, rampant hacking and insurance fraud, and the Labor Cabinet’s own worker shortage has created an unimaginable backlog of claims still yet to be processed.
At the moment, Link said case workers are taking appointments as they can, and that most are working 10-to-14 hours six days a week.
It’s been a worst-case scenario for Kentucky, its labor market, and its people.
Link said the state is in a market for a new unemployment system, and hope to have a vendor locked in by October.
West Kentucky Workforce Board Business Liaison Tom Sholar later noted that following successful job fairs in Christian, Calloway and McCracken counties, planning is in the works for another job fair in Hopkinsville, as well as in Trigg County.
The West Kentucky Workforce Board serves Marshall, Ballard, Muhlenberg, Caldwell, Lyon, Trigg, Hickman, Christian, Todd, Livingston, McCracken, Calloway, Carlisle, Hopkins, Crittenden, Fulton and Graves counties.
