Thread by @Dpugel

Through the rest of #kyga22 we’re going to hear a lot of false claims about a slow recovery to justify painful cuts to the safety net.

I just wanted to come here to say those claims aren’t true. We’re in the midst of a historically strong recovery.🧵
kypolicy.org/kentucky-jobs-…

Just by way of comparison, the current employment recovery is 6 times faster than the 2001 recovery, and outpaces all of them going back to 1981.

(And that's even after throwing out May 2020 when call-backs led to >100,000 returning to their jobs!)

What’s really remarkable is that for employers who pay even modest wages, the jobs have fully recovered.

Its only jobs paying less than $27,000/year that haven’t recovered yet – still employing 15% fewer than at pre-pandemic levels.

There are some Kentuckians who are outside of the workforce: retirees (which have increased 7% during the recovery) and folks 25-54 yrs old taking care of kids/loved ones (who make up more than half of the prime-age workers outside the labor force, overwhelmingly mothers).

So the thing is, if we wanted to ramp-up labor force participation even more there are three sure-fire ways of doing that:

1. Raise wages
2. Improve child care affordability/availability
3. Increase home & community based services for older and disabled Kentuckians

A sure-fire way of increasing hardship, lowering quality of life and harming local economies would be cutting the weeks of available jobless benefits or making them stingier through stricter work search/suitability requirements (i.e. HB 4).
kypolicy.org/hb-4-would-sla…

There will be other #kyga22 proposals to cut things like food and medical assistance based on the same false narrative.

When you hear that, please remember that cutting assistance wont improve an already amazing recovery, but will only make living harder and economies weaker.