 All right, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are just a little bit after 2 o'clock, so appreciate all of you for joining us on this Friday afternoon. My name is Kyle Tweet, and I'm the communications and outreach coordinator for the Vermont Department of Labor. I have a few folks with me here today to talk about work search. For those of you that joined us last time on our session on Monday, this session will be very similar in terms of the information that our speakers will provide. Really just providing an overarching description of work search and what it means for you as unemployment insurance claimants and what to expect, whether it's the requirements of work search, how you can prepare and of course what resources the department has to offer. Just a few housekeeping items. For those of you again who attended last time, this session will be recorded and we will be posting it onto our YouTube channel so you can view this following today's event. We also have a number of other events next week, so I would encourage you to check out our website. If you're an unemployment insurance claimant, you likely received an email earlier today with more information on all those events. Those include how to enter a work search, which will be a step-by-step overview of the information that you'll need as well as getting more into the topics that we talk about today. So with that, I'd like to introduce, actually I'll jump into how to enter your questions. You will be entering questions into the chat and I will be monitoring the chat function and then asking questions to our speakers as time allows. So please, if we don't get to any of all questions, please know that we are seeing the questions that you're posting into the chat today and we'll be working our best to address as many as possible in this session as well as subsequent sessions and information that is on our website. So again, thank you again for joining us and I will take this opportunity to introduce our speakers today. We have Cameron Wood once again who's joining us. He's our director of unemployment insurance for the department, as well as Cindy Robillard who's representing our workforce development division today. So with that cam, I think I will kick it over to you. If you want to just provide a quick overview of unemployment insurance perspective and then we'll send it to Cindy and then we'll kick it back over to you just for some more, get into more detail. So with that cam, I will send it to you. Sure, good afternoon everybody. As Kyle mentioned, my name is Cameron Wood. I am the unemployment insurance and wages division director for the Department of Labor. Happy to be here this afternoon. For us here at the department, especially unemployment insurance, we're excited to be back in this position. It's been a very long 12 to 13, 14 months under this pandemic. As many of you who may be joining us if you've been on unemployment for this period, you probably recall that we suspended the work search efforts back in March of 2020 in response to the governor's emergency orders and in addressing the pandemic response. And it has been a very long, long period. But we're excited to be here, being able to re-institute work search, all the information that we have from our medical professionals and from trying to coincide with the governor's reopening plans. We're able to re-institute a work search effort at this time. And we want to acknowledge that the primary goal for the unemployment insurance program is really re-employment. Our primary objective for individuals who are on the unemployment insurance system is to help them get re-employed and help them get re-employed into a job that will be able to sustain them moving forward. So with that, we recognize that we also need to protect people who are still in a vulnerable state. We are still coming out of this pandemic. We are on a trajectory into the governor's reopening plan, but we still recognize that the pandemic is still ongoing. There are still individuals who remain vulnerable to COVID-19 and we want to adjust our work search efforts to be able to recognize that and to be able to account for those situations. So our goal is to get people back to full-time employment. We have exceptions here. We'll get into here in a little bit as part of the presentation for exceptions for people who are still vulnerable, taking care of children, been recommended by a healthcare provider to remain out of the workforce, et cetera. The other goals here for us in reinstituting the work search are we want to ensure that individuals who are filing for benefits have enough of a runway to get back to employment. We still have the extension programs and the additional benefits that we're providing to individuals on unemployment, but these programs are set to expire in September and there's no indication at this point in time of an extension, but some of the COVID qualifying scenarios will also sunset after the period of emergency is over and or during the summer period when school closures, when school is not in session. So for a lot of individuals who are on unemployment, we want to give them the runway appropriate to help them get back to work. We don't want people to be in a position where we get to the end of the summer and they are scrambling to try to find employment when their benefits are gonna be set to expire. The last thing is we obviously want to protect our employers. Without employers, we wouldn't have an unemployment insurance program and we have a lot of employers out there with a lot of job openings that we recognize needs support during this period to ensure that as we come through the recovery, employers are able to recover, bring people back, continue to provide jobs to individuals. So again, hopefully they can meet the primary goal of the unemployment insurance program, which is getting back to re-employment. So with that, Kyle, I'll turn it back over to you and looking forward to here in a minute, jumping into some of the specifics about our work search efforts. Great, thank you, Cam. Sydney, I'd like to turn it over to you really quick before we send it to Cam just to provide an overview of workforce development services. Sure, thank you, Kyle. And thanks for asking me to be here today. I'm really excited to be able to represent the Workforce Development Division, which is a separate division within the Department of Labor, but we work very closely with the Unemployment Compensation Division. And so basically our role is to support you on that runway or that on-ramp that Cameron mentioned to make sure that you know what resources are available to you to support your re-employment planning and efforts. And as we move through the presentation, I'll be able to give you a few specifics on some tools that we know are very helpful. And I guess I just wanna kind of give an overarching, make an overarching comment, which is it's a really good time to be an active job seeker making a work search. We know that there are a lot of jobs, quality jobs in Vermont right now, high quality, high well-paying jobs that represent a real variety of industries and represent different skills and backgrounds and interests. So we're looking at currently a little over 6,000 jobs that are out there and we just really want people to know that we are here to support them as they make connections to those employers and make sure that you're feeling confident and ready to do so. So we'll get into some really good tools a little further in the presentation, but just happy to be here. Thanks. Thank you, Cindy. So Cam, I guess, why don't we start getting into a little bit more specific? I guess if you could just provide an overview for folks, what is it that's happening on May 9th? We've made the announcement that work search is being reinstated, starting on Sunday. What does that mean for folks next week and what are they gonna have to do and what could they do between now and then? Kind of what are the steps? And I think just clarifying for folks kind of what they need to do and when might be an helpful way to get things started. Yeah, absolutely, Kyle. So we know that many individuals who are still on unemployment may have never been on unemployment before. And so again, because the work search has been suspended to this period, they may not understand how the process works. For everyone, keep in mind that the week of unemployment for our purposes begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday. And for every week that you file unemployment, remember that you're filing for the previous week. So the work search goes into effect beginning next week, beginning May 9th. However, remember that your weekly claim that you file next week will be for the prior week, as I just mentioned. So you will need to report your work search beginning on May 16th, which is the week that you would file your claim for the week of May 9th. So you have to do your work search next week, but you will report that work search for your weekly claim that you file beginning May 16th. And remember that you can file from Sunday through Friday and you do not have to do all of your work search in one day. We actually recommend in a lot of instances you stretch out your work search. But again, going back to my opening remarks, the goal is to help get re-employed. So we hope that all individuals are looking for full-time employment throughout the week, but the requirement is, if you're required to look for work, you're doing three job contacts every week. And Kyle, I don't know if this is an appropriate time to dive into more detail. I'll turn it back over to you, but just as a general matter, remember that you're reporting your three job contacts on your weekly claim, and your weekly claim is always being filed for the week prior. So you will have to report these work search efforts on May 16th for next week. Yeah, I mean, before we start getting into exceptions, because I know that continues to be a big topic, you know, what are those, what is considered from an unemployment insurance perspective to be a valid job contact? I guess if you could kind of hit on that, and then we can kind of pivot into, you know, some questions as well as, you know, exceptions as a whole. So I'll talk, and yeah, we'll go into more detail here about what a work search actually means. For starters, keep in mind that you have to register with the state's Vermont Job Link, and Cindy will get into Vermont Job Link in a little more detail, but just keep in mind that the first requirement is you have to be registered through the state's job bank system. And if you are not a Vermont resident, if you are filing in Vermont, but let's say you've moved to another state, you have to register with the job bank system that exists in that state. And so that's the first requirement. And know that that's a tool you can use to help search for work. And Cindy will get into more detail about what employers have available or jobs that you can use in using Vermont Job Link to look for employment that's available through that. But you have to register with Vermont Job Link. Secondly, again, as I mentioned a second ago, you have to do your three job contacts. And what does that mean? That means that you have to actually apply for a job, picking up the phone and asking someone if their hiring is not itself a job contact. If the employer says, yes, they are hiring, you can then ask them how you go about applying for work with that employer. If they allow you to do it over the telephone, then that can count as a job contact. If they require you to go online and fill out an online application, then that's how you have to conduct that job contact. What I'm trying to get at is the distinction between asking someone if they're hiring versus actually submitting an application for a job. And to be considered a valid work search, you have to do the latter. So if you call an employer and they say, no, we're not hiring, that would not count as a job contact. You have to actually apply for a job that is available. Keep in mind that a few of the requirements that we have in place, you cannot apply for the same job in a five week period. So if you apply for job A with an employer, you cannot use that same application or apply for that same job over a five week period with that employer, okay? If you apply for a restaurant job A with employer A on one week, you can go apply for another restaurant job, server job, whatever the position is with a different employer. You can't go back to the same employer and apply for the same job within a five week period. You can go back to the same employer and apply for a different position, but you cannot apply for the same position with the same employer within a five week period. Outside of that, it's really about looking for jobs that you are qualified to perform. That's what we would expect. You have to have the skills and the knowledge, the experience to do the work that you're applying for. And the examples I usually use for people are, if you're applying for a profession that requires a license, you can apply for that job unless you have that license in order to do so. So if you're applying to be an attorney, you need to have a legal license to practice. Same thing if you're applying in the medical field. You have to have the qualifications in order to do the work that you are actually applying for. Other than that, as long as you have the knowledge, the skills, the experience, et cetera, to do the work, then that would be considered an acceptable and a valid job contact. Kyle, thank you. Yeah, that's great. Certainly a lot of questions, we appreciate that. One thing I just wanna add really quick, if you are thinking about typing a question in the chat, feel free to, as you're looking through the chat of people who have already asked questions, there is a thumbs up button. If you see that and you are thinking of asking a very similar question, it's very helpful to me as I'm monitoring just to know that it's a question that is of high importance to you all as viewers. So, Cam, why don't we transition into exceptions to work search and to those that may not, that may be exempt from having to do a complete work search. So certainly a lot of questions around schooling and childcare and medical issues and all of those things, I think we've said as a department if you have a COVID qualifying reason, I guess if you can just go into a little bit more detail about some of those things and what folks really need to know about what that means from an exemption perspective. Absolutely, so I'll start by talking about the COVID qualifying circumstances and then we'll also get into self-employment in the PUA program. Keep in mind that we're trying to be as consistent as we can between individuals who are filing on regular unemployment or the PEUC program and individuals who are filing through the PUA program. For starters, we recognize, as I mentioned in the opening remarks that some individuals are still in a vulnerable situation as it relates to COVID-19 and their current economic circumstances. So what we're doing is we're making changes to our claimant portal to ask specific COVID-19 related questions and we are not at this point going to mandate work search efforts for individuals who've been identified as having a COVID-19 qualifying circumstance. We will be looking to roll out some expectations for those individuals as far as looking for work or preparing to re-enter the workforce when their COVID qualifying scenario ends, but for right now, the following individuals will not be obligated to look for work beginning on Sunday. So first, for individuals who have an underlying health condition where they have a recommendation from a healthcare provider to remain out of the workforce. This also applies for individuals who are the primary caregiver for someone who has been recommended to remain out of the workforce because of an underlying health care condition. So it's either you yourself or if you're a primary caregiver for someone, your child, your parent, your spouse, your partner, who your primary caregiving responsibility for that individual and they have an underlying health condition. We get a lot of questions about this. I've seen a lot of questions in the chat asking specifically about your individual circumstance and what I can tell you is we're not medical professionals here at the Department of Labor. So we're not going to be able to tell you whether your specific underlying medical condition will allow you to take advantage or allow you to claim that you meet the circumstance. What you need is a recommendation by a healthcare provider to remain out of the workforce or to remain in some type of quarantine or isolation because of your vulnerability and your need to not re-engage in the workforce. We got a lot of questions when we did that last town hall about this, about what type of documentation do you need. Keep in mind the UI program is really a self attestation program. So we're going to ask you the question on the claimant portal. Do you meet this circumstance? And if you answer yes, you do, you won't be required to do a work search. However, you also need to understand that if we go back and we're doing a review of your unemployment insurance claim and we identify that you've made this attestation that you need to remain out of the workforce because of a recommendation from a healthcare provider, we may ask you to provide us with that information. And so at that point, you're going to need to provide us with some type of documentation from your medical provider telling you that you need to remain in isolation or you need to remain out of the workforce. You can't go back to work yet because of an underlying health condition that makes you vulnerable to COVID-19. So again, I can't tell you whether your specific circumstance falls under that criteria. What I can tell you is you need to have been in contact with your healthcare provider and they need to provide you with that recommendation that you should not go back and look for work. You should not be involved in the public because of your underlying health condition. Just being concerned about COVID-19 is not in and of itself a justification. What we are hearing from our medical providers as an administration and as we're trying to move forward with the governor's reopening plans, individuals at this time can safely go back to work and employers are required to adhere to the federal and state guidance as far as ensuring that their workforce is safe. And keep in mind, if you go back to work and your employer is not complying with those recommendations from the federal and the state government about how to operate a workplace safely, you can quit that job as long as you've brought those concerns to your employer, you can quit that job and potentially still collect unemployment insurance. So where I'm getting at here is all of the evidence is telling us and we are in a position to now require individuals to begin to look for work because all of the evidence that we have together tells us that individuals can get back to work safely at this point in time. And so having just a general concern about the COVID-19 circumstances and about potentially contracting COVID-19 is not itself a qualification to identify that you have a recommendation to remain out of the workforce. You need to have a specific recommendation from a healthcare provider that you need to remain out of the workforce. So that's the first two, I'd say the first two qualifying scenarios. Again, either you yourself have an underlying health condition or you're a primary caregiver for somebody who has an underlying healthcare condition and you need to remain out of the workforce. Number three, individuals who their school is closed because of their child's school is closed because of COVID-19 or their childcare location is closed because of COVID-19. And so for these individuals, if you have a child or someone who under 18, you're the primary caregiver for them and their school or childcare remains closed, those individuals will not be required to look for work at this point in time. We get a lot of questions about this as well. Well, what about if my school is closed for one week, open for the next week and there's a one week on, one week off type of cadence and what we would say to that individual, very similar to what I was identifying with the first two criteria. There is no black and white rule. There is no one size fits all here. It's really gonna depend on your individual circumstances. What I can tell you is the amendments to the law that allowed us to have these individuals file and collect unemployment requires that your school and your child or your childcare is closed due to COVID-19. And so I've received a lot of questions in the previous town hall that we did. I've seen some in the chat come through. If your school is open, but you have decided to homeschool your kid, your child because of concerns about COVID-19, that itself is not qualifying and you would be required to look for work. Now, if your school is closed for a week and you have to have your kids at home and you do not have additional childcare opportunities for them, you would not have to do work search for that week. But if the school is open the following week and your children are going to school, then you would need to do a work search for that week. I know that there's a lot of frustration about this because it's individual circumstances and I've gotten a lot of feedback from claimants who are frustrated because they would have to look for work one week and not the other week. But what I can tell you is, our goal here at the Department of Labor is to make sure that you all are recognizing that there are plenty of job opportunities available and these qualifying circumstances will expire in the coming weeks and months. And so we have to get individuals back into the habit and into the expectation of looking for work. For example, on the school closure, it says that your school has to be closed because of COVID-19. Well, we're coming up on the end of the school year and so if you do not have childcare during the summer that would not qualify you to continue to be waived from work search. So we're trying to get individuals to understand that the law is relatively narrow in a scope about what is eligible, what is not eligible and we're also trying to support individuals in getting back to full-time employment as quickly as possible. There is nothing that prohibits you as a claimant from looking for jobs that allow you to work virtually, for example. There's nothing that prohibits you from being very honest as you're looking for work and telling employers, hey, the school that my child goes to is closed every other week and I don't have childcare for that individual. Therefore, I can only work every other week or I can only work during these periods because of a school closure. We're not asking you as claimants to be dishonest with employers. We're actually, we would advocate that you are upfront and honest about your current circumstances but we have to tie it back to what the law says which is your school or daycare is closed because of COVID-19. And so in the circumstances where it's not closed because of COVID-19, the unemployment insurance program requires that you'd be able to work available for work and actively seeking work. And so we have to, we're in a position now where we need to reinstate those work search efforts. So again, I know there's a lot of frustration about especially this provision. I'll go back to what I said at the beginning. A concern about COVID-19 in and of itself is not a qualifying circumstance and you would have to look for work. But again, keep in mind you can be as flexible as you want with your work search efforts as long as you have the qualifications to do the jobs that you're applying for. So Kyle, I just wanna make sure I got all of them quarantining family members, underlying health conditions, school closures, et cetera. These same provisions are gonna apply in the PUA program. Individuals who meet those qualifying scenarios will not be required to look for work if they're filing in PUA. Individuals who do not meet those circumstances will be required to look for work in the PUA system. The last remaining exception that I'll mention are for individuals who are self-employed or independent contractors who are filing for PUA. Those individuals are not gonna be required to look for three job contacts each week, but we are gonna require those individuals, you're self-employed, you're a business owner, you're an independent contractor, you are going to have to certify that you are engaging in business activities. There's a specific question that we've added to the portal. Do not have it in front of me, unfortunately, we'll make sure we provide that information to claimants next week on the additional town halls, but essentially at the end of the day, if you're a self-employed individual and you're still filing in PUA, we want to make sure that you understand that you are engaging in economic activity, you're advertising for your business, you're applying or you're submitting bids for contracts, et cetera, I mean, you need to be re-engaging with your business activity to get back to full-time employment, so you no longer need to file in the PUA program. I remember seeing earlier in a chat that someone said they're self-employed and they're not working and they have no intention of doing a work search, can they still file for PUA? The answer in that case would be no. If you're a self-employed individual, you've identified a self-employed and you need to be engaged in economic activity to re-engage your business, and if you're not doing that, then you would no longer be eligible. Keep in mind, you can answer the question how you deem it appropriate given your circumstances, but as you're doing your work search efforts, you need to document them, you need to have records of them because if we come back to do a review of your work search activities, we would expect you to be able to provide us with documentation to support the situation that you're in. So Kyle, with that, I'll turn it back over to you for now unless there's anything I missed. No, thanks, Cam, I appreciate it. Again, I wanna remind folks in terms of how I am going through the chat, I am giving, in terms of prioritizing the questions that we're gonna cover today, I'm gonna give priority to the questions that have the most likes, if you will, so the most thumbs up. So please make sure before you type a question in the chat that the question has not already been typed. So with that in mind, I'm just gonna go ahead and start looking at the most liked questions. Cam, honestly, like the top five questions that we have are around suitable work and what if I am, there's no jobs in my field, over qualified for my position, I have to, I mean, I saw somebody saying that, I'm in higher education or I saw somebody saying that, they work in the physical health fitness industry, they've been really working toward that, the jobs that they were applying for are 25% less than what they typically were making. A lot of those different things and we might jump over to Cindy for some of this as well, but I just wanted to get your perspective on some of those suitable work conversations, just get a little bit more context from the UI perspective about suitable work. Yeah, absolutely. And the other aspect of this gives me an opportunity to bring up, I think, or the 10 week return to work rule, which I saw a few questions coming through related to that and also some part-time work questions. You know, I'll start with the suitable work, again, we try to be as flexible as we can with individuals. We're not here to tell you what job you need to apply for. We're not here to necessarily tell you what jobs you can't apply for or must apply for. At the end of the day, the requirement is to be actively seeking work. And we do that by requiring you to submit three job contacts. If you personally don't feel that you meet the qualifications for a position or a position is not suitable for you, we're not obligating that you apply for it. What I can say is that, you know, there are, and Cindy, I do not mean to steal any of your presentation here, but, you know, there are over 6,000 jobs currently available in our Vermont job link system, which we know does not include all the jobs that are available in the state or within our region. So I know that there was a little frustration from some claimants on our last town hall about, you know, maybe there aren't jobs available in your particular region for the profession that you currently work in. And, you know, my immediate response to that would be, we have a workforce development division that is here to support you in potentially looking towards a different profession. If there are zero jobs available for you in the work that you're looking for, then you need to expand the work that you're looking for. And I know that that can be frustrating for claimants to hear, but at the end of the day, again, our role in the economy, in employment is to help individuals get re-employed. And so if you have zero jobs available to you in your profession, then we need to talk about moving you into a different profession. And we have resources available to assist you in doing that. For example, if you are in an approved training program that's gonna put you into a high demand occupation, we can help assist you in that training program and in paying for that training program. And we can also wave work search if you are in a training program to get into a high demand occupation. So if you can't find jobs for yourself in your profession, my first, my comment back to you would be, you need to be in contact with our workforce development division so we can get you into a profession that is a high demand profession and we can assist you in doing so. Again, a few other pieces, and Kyle, if there's specific suitable work questions, I'm happy to jump into them. Really, we allow you to look for the work that you deem to be suitable as long as you have the requirements or the qualifications to do the work. Outside of that, the region you wanna look for work in, the hours you wanna look for work, all that is really gonna be up to you. We're pretty flexible. A few other things I wanna mention, the 10 week return to work rule. There is a rule in a department policy that if someone has a return to work date within 10 weeks of their initial claim, they're not required to do work search. We've gotten a lot of questions from individuals who say, I'm working part time because my employer hasn't fully reopened, my employer anticipates fully reopening in July and hopes to bring me back full-time then am I required to look for work? And the question would be, is the return to full-time employment within 10 weeks of your initial claim? And if you just filed an initial claim within the past few weeks, then it's likely within the 10 weeks and you can have your employer report that return to work date to us and they can do that on our website. And then you would not be required to look for work. However, if it's beyond the 10 week period, then you are obligated to look for work. And again, keep in mind that our goal is to help you get re-employed. And I know that everyone's individual circumstances are different and we want the rule to be individually tailored to ourselves but unfortunately we can't administer a program that way. So what I can tell you is we're not asking you to lie to people. We're not asking you when you're looking for work. Let's say you're working part-time. You're working 20 hours a week and you're hoping to get back to 40 hours a week in July or August. When you're doing your job searches, you can tell employers that, you know? I'm looking for part-time work. I have a 20 hour a week job. I only need 20 hours a week and I only need it between now and July. And you can be honest and we would consider it a valid job contact if you apply for a job and the employer asks you if you're able to work and you tell them that. I am able to work but only 20 hours a week and only through August because I'm going back to full-time employment. That would be a valid job contact. We would not count that against you. So the role of unemployment is to help individuals get back to work and we incentivize people to work part-time. If you're working part-time, you can use your part-time job as a job contact, okay? So when you're filling out your weekly claim, if you're already working one hour a week, 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, you can use that as one job contact. If you're working two jobs, you can use that as two job contacts. Maybe you're working one job 10 hours a week, one job 20 hours a week but you're not quite back to full-time employment. You can count both of those as a job contact and you would just enter them into the claimant portal as a job contact as you would. Your employer's name, your supervisor, their contact information. So we want to incentivize people getting back to employment and we allow people to collect unemployment while they're still working part-time. Granted, they don't make a certain amount of money. I mean, when you make two times your weekly benefit amount or more than two times your weekly benefit amount, you would no longer be eligible. The other thing I'll mention is the, I think this was a question that came up earlier. The $300 is available to you if you're collecting partial unemployment. So you're able to go back to work 10 hours a week. You're still able to potentially collect unemployment to help supplement the wages that you've lost and you still get the $300 supplement. So we don't want people to be scared in taking part-time employment and you shouldn't be expected to quit your part-time job unless you so choose. We're not mandating that you quit your part-time job and go look for full-time work. We're asking you to go look for work that will help supplement your part-time position and hopefully in doing so, you're able to find a job that is even better than the part-time job that pays more. There was one question I saw come through and it commented that employers aren't paying enough. The wages aren't enough and I don't know what field you're looking in. I was only able to see it briefly come across the feed but what I can say is we have a minimum wage that's set by our state legislature and I apologize if the work you're looking for you don't feel as sufficient at an hourly rate but again what I would do in that instance is I would tell you contact our workforce development division. There are plenty of jobs available in high-demand occupations and we have the resources and the funding and the programs to help you get retrained into those professions and again we in a lot of circumstances can waive your work search while you're doing that. So if you're going to training full-time to get into a high-demand profession you don't have to be expected to be looking for work at the same time. So there's a lot of resources that we have available to people in those circumstances. So I hope that helps and provides a little bit more clarity on the part-time work and the suitable work and the 10-week return to work rule. What I can say is for some individuals if you're working in a profession that is still at a reduced capacity it all depends on your individual circumstances. If you're an owner of a business if you're self-employed in PUA again you can continue to file in PUA as long as you're taking steps to try to promote your business advertising remaining open, et cetera. If you're an employee of one of those professions again I'm not asking you to disregard your profession but what I am here to tell you is we need to find you employment between now and when your chosen profession can bring you back to full-time. Thanks, Gam, I appreciate that. I think now is before we go to Cindy so Cindy if you want to queue up and kind of get ready. Cam I guess just from a lot of questions about individual circumstances is there any direction at this point? I know we are for what folks should do if they have very specific questions about their circumstances. I know at the end of the day we're really instructing people to think about their individual circumstances and if they have an exception if it's a COVID qualifying reason. Is it best to contact the Clayton Assistance Center or the Call Center? I know we're gonna be putting out a lot more information in terms of FAQ documents and those types of things on our website. I'd also give a plug for those of you on PUA and for other specific requirements and exemptions we're also gonna be doing some sessions next week about that as well. So more information to come but Cam I guess if there's any additional resources that folks should take advantage of before you go to Cindy just one to give you an opportunity to highlight those. Yeah, so we have information available on our website. Hey Cam, I muted you on accident. Okay, okay. We have information available on our website. We're going to continue to update that information based on these town halls. I know that I can see just here 69 published questions. Obviously I haven't been able to get to even a fraction of those. So we know that information is being requested and we'll be looking to update our website or FAQs to reflect these. So keep an eye on our website. We're gonna also try to push this information out to claimants via email. As Kyle mentioned, we will have some more targeted town halls available next week. So please jump back on. But what I can tell you is our staff are not gonna be able to answer your specific circumstance. And I know that you're frustrated to hear me say that. What I can't tell you is if you're saying and I have no idea if this is the case, that I haven't seen across this come across the feed at all, but if you're saying I have this individual health condition, I have asthma or I'm predisposed to this circumstance. If I get sick, I have this past history with respiratory illness. Our staff are not gonna be in a position to tell you, yes, that means you don't have to look for work. That's not our role. We can't do that. What I can tell you is what the law allows us to do. The law allows us to say, if you have a recommendation by a healthcare provider. Again, I'm not here to tell you what a healthcare provider is gonna tell you. Our staff can't tell you that. We're not medical professionals. If you go to your healthcare provider and you tell them, doctor, I have this underlying healthcare condition. I'm concerned about getting back into the workforce because I feel that if I contract COVID-19, I'm in a vulnerable position and I can't, my risk at that point is heightened from contracting COVID. I need a recommendation. Do you have a recommendation that I remain at home? And you have that assurance from your doctor. That's what we're gonna look for. If we get to a point of examining your work search and you're claiming that exemption, that's what we're gonna ask. Do you have a recommendation from your healthcare provider to remain out of the workforce? There was a question in here. I did see it was someone who asked, you're working part-time and the days that you're not working, you're taking care of an elderly family member. You need to have a recommendation from your healthcare provider that getting back to full-time employment would put the family member you're taking care of at a heightened risk because of their vulnerability. I would potentially push back on you a little bit to say you're already working part-time. So what I can tell you is you have to remain able to work, available to work and actively seeking work. That's the underlying requirements of the unemployment program. We've been able to get around that because of the pandemic and allow people who have underlying health conditions to remain at home, who are having to take care of their children because of school closures, et cetera. What I can tell you is these exceptions are going to go away in the very near future. I don't have a date to tell you when they're going to go away, but for people who are taking care of their child, schools will be closed within the next month and a half because of summer break. And then at that point, your qualifying circumstance no longer exists for individuals who have been asked to quarantine because of a recommendation from a healthcare provider, for example, that has been extended by executive order by the governor during the period of emergency. And I know that the goal is to try to get back to a reopening by July. So that exception may no longer exist come the summer. And so I can't answer your individual circumstance. Our staff will not be able to answer your individual circumstance. What we can tell you is what the law says. And if you have a recommendation from your healthcare provider to remain out of the workforce at this time because you have an underlying health condition or because you're taking care of someone with an underlying health condition, we would consider that to be sufficient to allow you to use that exception. Simply saying that I tend to be sick and I feel like I'm immunocompromised and I'm concerned about contracting COVID-19 is not gonna be a sufficient justification because that's not what the law allows. The law does not say you cannot look for work because you're concerned about COVID-19. So again, I know that that's gonna be frustrating because people want their individual questions answered. And what I can say is please put your questions in the chat, we download these chats, we look through them, we update our FAQs to try to reflect information that we gather. But we have to just advise you what the law is and then try to provide as much context in detail as we can. Again, I would just say that if individuals ask me about their particular circumstance, I'm gonna go back to them and say, the law says that if you have a recommendation from a healthcare provider, then you can remain at home. And if you have that, you feel that you have that, then you can check that qualification and you wouldn't have to look for work. Outside of that, you have to look for work. Nobody's telling you what work you have to look for. I'm not telling you that you have to go get a job where you're gonna be interacting with people all the time if you're concerned about that. You can look for other work, maybe virtual work, could be telework, could be in a field in which you're able to be outside where there's less exposure to transmission as long as you have the qualifications to do the work that you're looking for. If you feel that you don't or you feel that you need support or training in a new profession, that's where our workforce development division comes in. And Kyle, that may be a good segue to kick it over to Cindy. And I apologize that we're at 2.54. I've taken up a lot of the time Cindy and I apologize for that. Yeah, Cam, I definitely a hog of time but I think great information nonetheless. So appreciate you going into that little detail. And Cindy, I guess really, I mean, from a Vermont job link perspective, I'm happy to share my screen here in a minute. Just in terms of, what is Vermont job link? What resources, a lot to cover in a handful of minutes here. But Vermont job link and what opportunities do folks have to offer? And I know last time we talked a little bit about the different Vermont job link is just one resource. But Vermont job link also is the requirement for people on UI. So I guess if I'll kick it to you, if you are the expert, so I will let you talk. But certainly just if you can kind of go through the resources from a workforce development perspective. Sure, yeah. So the workforce development division is really, the function, the main goal that we have in serving Vermonters is to help them transition to employment and match job seekers with employers. So job seekers with jobs. And Vermont job link is the tool that we have to do that. And it also is the required tool if you are an unemployment claimant. I'm looking right now at a question in the chat about, what about using other search engines and tools? Those are fine. And we would encourage that as part of an overall re-employment strategy. But having the job seeker account in Vermont job link is something that you are going to need to do if you are drawing unemployment benefits. The benefits of doing that and having that account are that you can enter some information about yourself. You can create a resume if you don't currently have one. We have, there's a tool function to help you through that process. And most importantly, you then have access to all the information about the jobs that Vermont employers are posting. So again, we are working really hard with the business community to encourage them to post their job openings with us, give us as much information as possible so that it's right at your fingertips as you start this job search process. So I will say that for those of you who have used Vermont job link in the past, maybe since you've used it last, we've undergone a pretty significant upgrade to that system. And so when you log in again, it's gonna look a little bit different. Kyle's scrolling through it right now. One of the things that you may need to do is reset your password, which happens if you have not been active in that system for a period of time and our staff in the resource centers are available to help you do that. And so, as you scroll, you can see many options that are available. There's a calendar of our events. You can look for different tools, assessment tools and community resources that are available and you can make connections to those. So again, it's a requirement, but it's also something where the searching there is easy and it really can be a very, very useful tool. Yeah, I can see that Kyle's actually doing a little bit of filtering right now and demonstrating a job search. So he's basically, I think, drilled down to just show the number of jobs in the state of Vermont, which is showing right now about close to 7,000 jobs. So, but then there are ways you can streamline and filter that even further. You can search by keywords, you can search by regions and how far you're willing to travel. So if you need assistance working with Vermont JobLink and it's just not super comfortable for you to be able to use that system, that's when you want to make a connection to one of our resource centers. And all of that work is being done virtually right now, but we are available as easy as a phone call or an email to walk you through and really support the, getting you in here, getting you comfortable with it and having you get the most out of the Vermont JobLink tool. So the only other thing I just wanted to touch on briefly and we've heard a little bit about it, but we're here to help you transition. So, if you're feeling really stuck and you're not feeling like you know where, what direction to head in, the workforce development division is really the, we're charged with making sure that we have, we support you in transition. So we can help you look at what your transferable skills are. What are you really good at? What parts of the work that you may have done in the past could take you in a new direction? What are your interests? And then as Cameron had mentioned several times, helping you understand like what are those high demand jobs? We have a labor market unit that works really hard to collect a lot of information about the high demand jobs that are out there and what the requirements are for those jobs. And in some cases, it may mean that you do need to upgrade your skills or get some training or, whether it's a short-term thing to get you a certificate or another credential of some kind that will really lead you to that next best opportunity for you. So that's what we're here to do. And so we, you know, our staff will ask you lots of questions and try to get to know you and we really wanna support where you wanna go. And the final thing I'll just say, there's a lot of resources and I don't really have time today to talk about all of them, but just know that, you know, that's our role is to really connect you to resources, funding, training opportunities, training providers and good jobs and help you get matched up. The best way to make the initial connection with us right now is to go to our website. Kyle is showing on the screen a web form that you can complete. And it really just helps us to know where you wanna start. What is it that you would like to us to know about you so that we can match you with one of our career specialists in the field and be able to, you know, really set the groundwork for a really good conversation. So by completing this form, it goes behind the scenes to our staff who then, our management staff who then assign it to one of the folks in their region to, and then then you would hear directly. I mean, they would outreach to you, you know, pick up the phone, call you, review the form with you and it can lead to a lot, take you in a lot of different directions. So I guess what I would kind of wanna close with is, you know, if you're feeling very uncertain about, you know, the next step or what it's gonna look like, I think taking the first step of completing the form is something that, you know, do it and let us see where it takes us. And the only other thing I wanna mention is that there's been quite a bit of conversation about part-time employment. You know, employers are pretty flexible right now and it may very well be that, you know, in the past it wasn't easy to fill in and create part-time opportunities that kind of worked well together, but I think we are seeing, you know, maybe more opportunity for that. So if you have that part-time job that you love and you're really committed to and you wanna stay with, that seems like a really good plan and it's very possible at this point that we may be able to find that additional part-time employment that might help pull it to a full-time kind of benchmark and get you where you need to be. So we're here, we're here to support you and we really, you know, we want you to take advantage of the many resources that are available. So and making that initial connection is the first step. So I think that's what I've got, Kyle, unless you have any questions. No, thank you so much. I think that is probably, you know, really good from your perspective. I know we're right about three o'clock, you know, I'm happy to kind of go through questions, but I wanna be conscious of our speaker's times as well. So, you know, I know there's been a lot of questions in particularly from a PUA claimant perspective, a lot about, you know, starting your, like if you've been, you've started your own business during COVID or if you are a self-employed individual, you know, what are the requirements? We are gonna be doing a specific PUA session next week on the 12th, which I believe is Wednesday. So I would encourage you to tune in then. I know there's a lot of questions too about part-time works and he was just referencing, you know, for you, for those of you that have a 30, that were at full-time employment before the pandemic and your employer has scaled you back, you know, certainly, you know, that is not necessarily something that you've been used to. I think we'll go through more on that in terms of our part-time session on the 11th, which is next Tuesday, as well as exemptions and suitable work. For those of you that have been asking questions about, you know, how, you know, what information am I gonna have to put in, you know, when I enter a work search? I think it's very valid, you know, a lot of questions indeed others are like one click and apply now. So, you know, certainly, you know, how do we get that information and what information is actually required in order to enter a work search? We'll be going over that on Monday. Again, all of these sessions will be recorded and added to our YouTube channel. I've been putting a lot of that into the chat. So I would encourage you to check out those links. All of this though is available on our website. Again, we'll be updating this page, this unemployment insurance work search page in the coming days and weeks. I did just want to reiterate something Cam said at the top. Again, work search is gonna be reinstated on May 9th and that is gonna be searching for work for the week ending May 15th. But you won't actually be reporting that until the week starting May 16th. So, you know, you'll be starting your work search, starting to look for work between May 9th and May 15th, but you'll be reporting that, you know, starting the 16th and you'll have to do that before you file your weekly claim for the week, for that week as well. So again, this is for the benefit week ending, you know, May 15th that we're referencing when it comes to the reinstatement of work search. So with that, I want to thank everybody for joining today's session at the height. We had about 200 people joining us. So I want to thank everybody for jumping on to listen more. As I said, we'll be having, you know, multiple sessions next week, as well as more to come in terms of information. Again, the best resource is gonna be our website as well as our social media channels. And please stay tuned on your emails as well. We'll be sending emails directly to claimants with more information as it becomes available. I would encourage you to reach out for those of you that are, as Cindy said, just not, you know, 100% comfortable or, you know, kind of, you know, wondering what steps to take from a work search perspective, reach out to our workforce development team through the links in the chat or contact your local American Job Center to learn more about the resources in your local area. So again, thank you everybody for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you next week at some of our sessions. I hope you have a great weekend until Mother's Happy Mother's Day. Thank you so much.