The food supply chain is moving (and hiring)
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about the abundant food supply in the U.S. and the current logistical issues in getting it to the stores: You wouldn’t know it from the bare grocery store shelves across the country, but America has plenty of food. The challenge is getting it from the farm to […]
Federal funding for Washington will increase by hundreds of millions of dollars under temporarily increased Medicaid match
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the federal government has temporarily mandated paid sick leave and provided $1 billion for unemployment insurance grants to states. Additionally, the act increases federal funding for Medicaid. First, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of COVID-19 testing for the uninsured and there will be […]
New, temporary federal mandate for paid sick leave during the crisis
Wednesday President Trump signed H.R. 6201, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. As I noted yesterday, it includes provisions related to unemployment insurance. It also requires private employers with fewer than 500 employees and all public employers to provide paid sick leave to their employees who can’t work because they must quarantine or care for […]
19th of March 2020
Initial claims charts
Emily posted earlier today about the jump in initial claims for unemployment insurance. The first of these charts shows the four-week moving average of claims. Claims are usually shown as a four-week average in order to dilute week to week volatility. In the present situation, averaging hides the story. Here is a chart without averaging.
State distributes $87.8 million for COVID-19 response
The Office of Financial Management (OFM) announced that it has distributed $74.5 million from the disaster response account (DRA) and $13.3 million from the general fund–federal (GFF) for use in response to COVID-19. The funds are part of the $225.0 million appropriated in EHB 2965. EHB 2965 appropriates $25.0 million from the budget stabilization account […]
A big increase in unemployment claims, and how Washington is using unemployment insurance to respond to outbreak
Today the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reported that national unemployment insurance (UI) claims for the week ending March 14 increased by 70,000, to 281,000 (seasonally adjusted): “During the week ending March 14, the increase in initial claims are clearly attributable to impacts from the COVID-19 virus.” Non-seasonally adjusted data by state is available: For […]
18th of March 2020
Challenges for revenue forecasters and state budgets
Bill Lucia has a good story in Route Fifty on how the coronavirus outbreak could affect state budgets, with a heavy focus on Washington and some insights into Washington’s revenue forecasting and spending process. David Schumacher, director of Washington’s Office of Financial Management, said that when he looks at the public health crisis in his […]
Coronavirus response, rainy day funds, and state budget stress tests
Yesterday, Gov. Inslee signed EHB 2965, which appropriates $200 million from the rainy day fund in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak. (I wrote in detail about the bill here.) The Associated Press reports that other states are using their reserve funds for this purpose as well. Aside from the direct public health costs, . […]
17th of March 2020
An estimate of how coronavirus could impact Seattle’s budget
The Seattle Times reports, Seattle budget director Ben Noble’s team last week estimated the city could collect $110 million less than expected in general-fund tax revenue this year due to an economic breakdown caused by the virus and by efforts to slow its spread, said Noble. This would be a reduction of about 7 percent, […]
13th of March 2020
Legislature appropriates $200 million from rainy day fund (plus $25 million in federal dollars) for COVID-19 response—including for unemployment insurance
Yesterday (the last day of session), the Legislature passed EHB 2965. The House and Senate had each passed versions of the bill last week that would have appropriated $100.0 million from the budget stabilization account (BSA, or the rainy day fund). As adopted yesterday, the bill appropriates $200.0 million from the BSA. Of that, $175.0 […]