 Good afternoon and welcome to the Vermont House Human Services Committee today is Tuesday, May 11 and our afternoon committee meeting Will be sort of focused on us understanding Who are the unemployed in Vermont as we try to figure out what people need and things like that and we have To help us with that Joyce Manchester from Joint Fiscal Welcome Joyce Thank you very much. It's good to see all of you for the record. I'm Joyce Manchester with the Joint Fiscal Office the question is who are the unemployed and The federal government publishes a data set which is titled characteristics of unemployment insurance recipients So in the past we have relied on that report that data set to tell us about the characteristics of who's on unemployment insurance however You may recall that I was the one who was circulating the idea that 73% of unemployment insurance recipients in Vermont were women as of November of 2020 and I Was not aware that there were any problems with the underlying data for that report however in the last month or so there have been some Comments from the Department of Labor Suggesting that maybe that data is not as strong as we would like and maybe we shouldn't be repeating 73% Many many times because it might not be accurate So my job today is to first Reinforce the idea that yes women are bearing a bigger burden of unemployment during the recession and we will see some very good data very strong data that will substantiate that and Also, I'm going to explain why it is that the characteristics of unemployed Are no longer so good to look at so there's probably still giving us the right idea, but the exact number is probably not right Okay, so if you like I can share my screen to show you the issue brief and to run through that If you all look at it yourselves, I can just talk it through Which do you prefer? It seems to depend upon the day let me What do folks want? Can they look at it on their computer or do you want to see it up on the screen? I have it on my computer. I don't know what others need I'm seeing most people Carl, can you pull it up? I'm sure I can I just have to do it. Okay. I'm just okay And topper and James. I'm assuming you can Why don't we why I don't think we need it. Thank you Joyce We all many of us are using two devices So we'll pull it up and some will just pull it up on their computer Okay, good. Thank you. I'm going to start with the issue brief and If questions arise or if we have time we can certainly go to the the slides that are also posted on on your website So let's start with the issue brief. This was just released yesterday And I spent a good amount of quality time looking into the data last week So as the summary states in the world of the pandemic the data underlying the statistic on women's share of unemployment insurance recipients in Vermont No longer represent the full population of UI recipients So that's why we have concerns about the accuracy of the gender share in the data However, I'm going to be talking later about other Very good data very reliable data on jobs and earnings in Vermont that will show that working women have been proportionately hurt by the pandemic and this issue brief is focused on the the gender split among the unemployed who are getting unemployment insurance, but Later on we can also look at the industry split the sector split. Where are the unemployed coming from? Okay, so I've already mentioned the 73% of recipients in November 2020. We thought we're women However, what people often forget is that those statistics do change over time and as of March 2021 the most recent month for which we have data The proportion was 60% so already according to the the data the share of women among the unemployed has come down But what really caused some questions was the fact that the proportions for Vermont were much higher than any other state in the country and much, much higher than the national average. So there were lots of questions about why is Vermont so different And we were scratching our heads and trying to come up with reasonable answers. But in fact, maybe we didn't have to come up with those answers. Okay, so it turns out that prior to the pandemic The data that that were behind the report from the Department of Labor were about 95% of all of the people receiving unemployment insurance benefits. So 95% is almost everyone. Right. So we could have good confidence that we're going to be able to do that. But we were looking at good data. However, since the pandemic. So starting in March of 2020 that representation has dropped dramatically. So we've gone down to maybe 50% in some months maybe 60% in some months and most recently we've been down around 40% So we're missing data on a lot of recipients of unemployment insurance. So that tells you that the exact number that we're looking at the 60% are women or the 73% are women. Those exact numbers are probably not reliable. Okay, and We will let me let me keep going down through the issue brief and eventually we'll get to the better data, which looks at jobs in Vermont and is administrative data collected by the Department of Labor directly on every job in the state that pays into the unemployment insurance trust fund. So those those data will be more reliable. Okay. Okay. So, let's see. So I mentioned briefly that Vermont looked very different from other states and one of the big indicators was that Vermont's labor market is not that different from mains labor market so the first state I would look to to see a comparable state might be main. And when when Vermont was at 73% women among the unemployed women in Maine were just 55% of the unemployed in Maine. Okay, so that's a pretty big difference. And then that made me think, well, let's go back and look at the data. So it turns out that back in November, we had maybe 30,000 people on unemployment insurance. And if you look carefully at the report from the federal government, it says only about 10,000 were in the sample for the unemployed characteristics. Now, in my head, back in the day, I thought those 10,000 were the officially unemployed people. And here we have to get into the nitty gritty of what's officially unemployed and what's receiving unemployment insurance benefits. So prior to the pandemic, everyone who received unemployment insurance benefits had to be available and able to take a job if offered. Okay, so that's the work search requirement. And that says that if you're able to take a job if you get offered a job you are willing to take it. And therefore, prior to the pandemic, you were eligible to get unemployment insurance and you were officially unemployed. Okay, so prior to the pandemic, everybody who got unemployment insurance benefits was counted as officially unemployed. Since the pandemic started in March of 2020, the federal government said, okay, we know that many people are not willing to take a job because of the pandemic because they have children at home who can't go to school because they're taking care of elderly parents. For whatever reason, they are not willing to take a job if offered one. So we are not going to hold states to that eligibility requirement. So in Vermont, for example, right now we have about 20,000 people receiving regular unemployment insurance, and we have many fewer who are officially counted as unemployed. So, when you hear the unemployment rate on the news at night, which is now 2.9% or thereabouts, don't believe it. Because that only refers to the people who say that they are willing and able to take a job if offered. Okay, so that's a long way of saying that in my head. Back in the day, I thought I was looking at officially unemployed people who are answering the survey and saying, you know, 73% of us are women. In fact, that's not right. In fact, what happened was that the Department of Labor got pushed on its many, many, many responsibilities. Rightly they determined that their first responsibility was to make payments to unemployed people who were eligible for those payments and to get the payments out the door to the people who were eligible. So other aspects of their job sort of took a backseat. So this means that they were no longer able to report to check on responses in terms of gender. And so what they sent to Washington to answer the question, you know, how many of your unemployed are women how many are men. What they sent was only the folks who answered easily, right, so they could easily obtain the data for 10,000 people, even though they had 20,000 or 25,000 people who were receiving unemployment insurance benefits. So, at some point, if you're interested, you may want to talk to Matt Barowitz who is the person at the Department of Labor, who, who is in charge of these data and what goes to the federal government. But he will tell you that, you know, this was not their first priority that they simply couldn't keep up with with everything and so they were sending fewer data points to the federal government. As I mentioned, as of March 2021 the sample was only about 40% of the total number of people getting unemployment insurance benefits in Vermont. Maybe I should pause there and see if there are any questions so far. I do want to remind people that I'm talking only about regular unemployment insurance so I'm not talking about the folks who are getting PUA the pandemic unemployment assistance that goes to the self employed and so priorities and so forth. There is no established system for looking at those characteristics. So this is only for regular unemployment insurance. Joyce, I don't see uncharacteristically I don't see. Okay, we'll keep going. So now I want to assure you that we do have very strong evidence that says that women are still disproportionately affected by the pandemic. I should say working women. Those who were working are definitely disproportionately affected by the pandemic. And for this I'm going to rely on what's called the earnings and jobs by gender report that's put out by the Vermont Department of Labor. Data very strong data on every job in Vermont that pays into the UI system showing how many are women how many are men. This is by job, not by person so if a person has two jobs they would be counted twice, but it is very strong data. And we can look at both quarterly jobs held by men and women and also at quarterly wages. So we're going to look at the change in the number of jobs held by men and women from from the, let's see what do I focus on here from the second quarter of 1919. 2019 second quarter of 2019 to the to the second quarter of 2020. Okay, so we're talking what April, May, June 2020 compared to April, May, June 2019. If you're looking at the issue brief you will see that the decline in the, in the number of women who held jobs was about 17.5% over that one year period. And at the same time the number of jobs held by men in Vermont was about 15%. Okay, so a much a steeper decline in the percentage fall for women. So if you look at the number of jobs that declined, it went down by about 30,700 for women, and about 25,000 for men. So you can see more jobs previously held by women no longer existed in the second quarter of 2020. So you could do the same comparison using the third quarter of 2019 and 2020, and you would see a similar drop it was 12.5% for women, and just 9.7% for men. So again we're seeing a disproportionate hit to jobs held by women in Vermont. Any questions about that? Okay, good. And now we're going on and I'm going to add one more little wrinkle which will try to say that we have good evidence also showing that it's mostly low income women who were hit by the pandemic. So if you look at the data on wages, and if you see an increase in the average wage between 2019 and 2020, it's suggesting that the folks with low wage jobs dropped out of the labor force in other words their jobs were no longer in existence. So think of all the wages for all the jobs in the economy, and if you chop off the lower end, then the average wage is going to increase. So that's what happened between the second quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2019. So you can see there's a little table there showing that second quarter of 2019 to 2020, the average wage for women increased about 13.3%. The average wage for jobs held by men increased by 8.9%. So it's about 13% versus 9%. So quite a difference in that average wage. The same pattern exists in the third quarter of 2019 versus 2020, 13.1% drop, I'm sorry, increase in the average wage for women and an 8.8% increase in the average wage for men. So again, this is just saying that more women with low wage jobs seem to have lost their jobs and are no longer part of the workforce in Vermont. Okay, good. So that's the end of the fiscal note. I'm sorry the issue brief. I'm getting my, my publications next up. Joyce Joyce, I'm sorry this is I do. I do have a question I'm just trying to understand your table to. Sure. Right when you say dollars 361. The difference. Okay, so sort of think the difference right so think of the average wage for women. This is per quarter. So let's say it's $5,000. That's not correct, but let's say it's $5,000 in 2019. Then in 2020, when we looked at the average wage it would be higher at $5,361. Okay, the average wage has gone up, meaning that in this case we can be pretty certain that more low income women have lost jobs. And then of course the difference gets much bigger as you go to the second and third quarters it's up around $1,000. So you're going from maybe $5,000 per quarter up to a $6,100 per quarter as the average wage. Good. Are there all right. Let me before you move are there questions on the issue brief. Representative Whitman and then representative Whitman. Thank you Madam chair and thank you Joyce for being here with your figure two about the increase in wages. I completely understand how lower income. People leaving the workforce would result in an increase in the average wage, but I just have to ask, were there other things that you considered that could have also led to some kind of incidental increase in wage. During the pandemic so hard to imagine, but you know employers maybe paying more for people that absolutely anything like that with their considerations there. Absolutely. And so, so I guess the obvious thing is that we know that some employers have found it difficult to find workers for open slots, and they may be offering higher wages. Absolutely. The, the other possibility is that folks at the high end of the wage scale, maybe doing very well in some circumstances and maybe earning higher wages. So it's certainly possible that that's going on as well. However, I'm going to be showing you some information about where the job loss happened by industry. And we're going to see that it's, it's very strongly in the hospitality services sector. And that's where many women are in relatively low wage jobs. So we have substantiating evidence on our side. Thank you. Sure. Representative Redman and then representative from stead. Yes, Madam Chair. So I have a question about the people who drop off and stop looking for work, and we, we don't really know. I mean, do we, do we have any other way to account for that or to know what universe of people were talking about. I'm wondering going forward because this is always problematic we talk about this low unemployment rate and get there all these people who are just like they've given up or whatever they have extenuating circumstances. But I'm wondering if there is any other way we can kind of determine that or capture that or something we should be doing in the future to be able to really reflect accurately what the unemployment rate is. Thank you that raises a very good, good point and I should have mentioned that starting next week I believe the Department of Labor is requiring people once again to be looking for work and to answer yes I'm able and willing to work if offered a job. So this is going to be a giant experiment in the state of Vermont. I'm guessing that the unemployment rate is going to rise because more people will be answering yes to that question and therefore they will be officially counted as as unemployed. It will also be interesting to see if more people actually take jobs and therefore don't take unemployment insurance because if an employer offers a person a job, if they're unemployed and getting unemployment insurance and they refuse the job then the employer is supposed to report that person to the Department of Labor. So we will see what happens. I do think the official unemployment rate will rise in the coming months and it's going to be really interesting to see. And then just one other thing they'll always be that universe of people though who who have just stopped looking and are not really there's no way to know that they're you know they're either underemployed or whatever and they just they're not recorded anywhere. I'm guessing what that will always remain. Yes, so there are people who are considered to be discouraged workers that's the official term. So they have stopped looking for work because they think there's not a job out there for them they wouldn't take a job even if it were offered to them, and so forth. So, there have been a number of articles New York Times and elsewhere about people who are reconsidering their lives and what it means to, you know, be on the rat race and be working too many hours a week and not seeing their families and often so forth and the pandemic has has caused some of them to rethink what's most important to them so it's going to be interesting again to see what happens particularly with women who have been coming into the labor force at greater rates to see if there's a real shift in how many of those women come back or how many decide to not come back, or how many decide to come back on their own terms so that maybe they're taking part time jobs or more flexible jobs or whatever. That's going to be a big experiment. So, I have a question about that same chart that our chair had a question about chart or table two. For me, I'm obviously not reading this right so I need help but but so the female $361 but the male $249 doesn't that mean then the opposite of what we're saying which is that women are getting less than men this looks like they're getting more. Good question good question. Alright, so I'm now staring at both the table and the chart, and we can say that the average wage in 2019 for women. Let's make it easy let's say it's $8,000. Okay. Okay, so I'm looking at the red line for women. And in the second quarter of 2019, we're going to call it $8,000. Now we're moving to the second quarter of 2020. And we can see that the average wage for women is up a bunch, and it's up by about $361 according to the table. Okay, so that's the average wage for women, meaning that the women who are still in jobs, still working at jobs are getting a higher average wage in 2020 than the women who were working back in 2019. Okay, so there are fewer of them working, but they're getting a higher average wage over the three months of the quarter. So that tells me that suggests strongly that it's the low wage workers who have lost their jobs. On average. Okay. Okay. So men are getting less of an increase than the women are those that are left in the job market so they that would suggest that some of the lower paid workers are still in the market is that Yes, maybe a greater percentage of the lower wage workers among men are still in their jobs. So a smaller percentage of the lower wage workers have lost their jobs for men. Right. Okay, okay. It's interesting. Yeah, you have to get your mind around it a bit. Joyce, we have one other question, or one other person asking questions. I'm sorry, Jessica represent from said, or did you have other questions. No, I'm done. I just, it's hard to manage all the different things opened on the screen. Representative noise. Thank you, Madam chair. I just wondered, do we collect the data of the number of people who are unemployment that have dependents, both male and female. The answer is that during normal times pre pandemic, the Department of Labor tells us that 45% of unemployment insurance recipients have dependents. So somehow, I don't know exactly how they know, but they know that about 45% have dependents. We think that because more low wage people are unemployed during the pandemic that that percentage has risen to maybe 50 or maybe even 55% low wage workers tend to have more children than high wage workers. But it's not a question asked to collect unemployment. So somehow they know so they must be collecting the data in some way, I will add to this, that the main frame at the Department of Labor that does the unemployment insurance calculations is unable to differentiate between eligible people with dependents and those people who do not have dependents. So as the main frame stands now they would be unable to implement a dependent benefit. They could offer an extra benefit like the supplemental $600 a week to everybody because that's one payment amount that goes to everybody on unemployment insurance, but they do not have the capability and they don't have any coders who are capable of differentiating between who has a dependent who does not who gets the $50 a week dependent benefit who who does not. So that is the problem. Thank you. Sure. I think that's it for the questions thus far and representative noise to follow up though on your question. That was something that we asked the Deputy Commissioner of Economic Services. You're out. Actually not who have dependents but who has dependents who might be accessing some kind of assistance from the Department of Economic Services and they seem to have some kind of data match. We're in theory getting some kind of information for them from them, at least in terms of what individuals with low income are receiving in terms of assistance now and with the extra with the pandemic. That's coming today. Thanks Joyce. So are we on to the next. So yes, I put together some slides so that we can also look at the industry shares of people who are unemployed. So that might be interesting for people as well. And again those slides are available on the committee website if everybody wants to tune into those. So the question is what do we know about who is unemployed in Vermont. And unfortunately, because we don't have a lot of confidence in that data set called characteristics of the unemployment insurance recipients. And we're not going to have as much data as we wish to answer the question but we can once again look at the jobs that were lost, and the jobs that were lost correspond in many cases to people who are now unemployed. So, we'll get there through a back door. Okay, so so once again I'm just reinforcing the fact that characteristics of unemployment insurance recipients covered about 10,000 Vermonters back in back in November, but a 21,000 at that time we're getting unemployment insurance payments. So, even back in November, we covered about 50% of the people getting unemployment insurance. So, again, that sample was not representative. So, I had this very nice picture that showed you male and female shares in Vermont relative to the country as a whole. And lo and behold there was this big difference, which looks very impressive. We also looked at the shares by age group. And once again we had a big difference or a sizable difference in older workers in particular with Vermont having more older workers on unemployment insurance. Unfortunately, the Vermont numbers here may not be entirely accurate so we also had this wonderful spaghetti line chart I'm now looking at what's called figure one regular unemployment insurance recipients in Vermont and the US. So the red and blue lines, the solid lines were Vermont, the dashed lines were the US. So you can see that the swings over the year were much more pronounced in Vermont than in the US. So the US share of women on unemployment insurance was varying between maybe 52% and maybe 37%. Whereas in Vermont, the share was varying pre pandemic from about what 25% to about 57%. Okay, so much, much bigger swings. Now that pattern seemed pretty regular in 2018 and 2019 until the pandemic hit, and then you can see things just went backwards upside down, curfewy. So that starting in April of 2020 women, the solid red line in Vermont, all of a sudden jumped way up went up to 60% and then kept going up to the 73 74% in October of 2020, you can see that. At the same time, the women share for the US which is the dashed line. The women shared did show a different pattern so all of a sudden women share was bigger than men's in the US as a whole. But the difference was what 53% maybe for women versus 47% for men so not at all as as stark a difference. So again, I've got that arrow and red letters saying based on a small sample to say the general ideas probably right for Vermont but the exact numbers are probably not. Okay, and finally, that my original issue brief had this nice table, which showed by different sectors by different industries in Vermont, where are we seeing the unemployed. As we were finding 26% of the unemployed came from the accommodation and food services sector, about 12 and a half percent from the healthcare and social assistance sector, about 5% from educational services. Again those shares were quite a bit higher than the national average. Okay, again, probably in the right direction probably not the exact right numbers. So let's look at some really good data. These are Vermont labor force estimates seasonally adjusted. So I can look at the civilian labor force and the number of people who are employed. And you can see in March 2021 the most recent data we had. So about 304,000 people who are employed. And actually I should be saying jobs, because this comes from jobs data collected from employers. So the employer says yes, Susie Q is employed at my firm, and maybe the employer down the road says yes Susie Q the same Susie Q is employed at my firm so these are actually counting jobs, not people. So Joyce, when you say, these are count these are jobs. I'm self employed. So am I counted in that or no so I'm not counted in that. No, because you don't pay into the unemployment insurance system. So, right. So you can see the change from March 2020 to March 2021 there's a column called change from way over on the right hand side. And you can see that we've lost about 29,500 jobs. Between March of last year and March of this year. Okay. So that's, that's the change in the number of jobs in Vermont. All right, so that's good data and now just to show you how bleak things have been. I wanted to give a little bit of a longer perspective so here's a chart from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So this is data for Vermont, and you can see back in 2011 January 2011 when the chart starts that we had about what 338,000 jobs. We're toodling along just fine doing well, a little bit of a decrease because of our demographic structure in Vermont we have fewer working people as the years go by more older people. But then in what April of 2020 we see this big plunge, which dropped all the way down to about 303,000 and since then has bumped up a little bit but certainly nowhere near back up to the normal level. Okay, so once again those are good data, and we can see that change in employment, or the number of jobs over time. Moving on to the next chart now here I have the good earnings and jobs data by gender from the Department of Labor, and I can see by sector, where the job loss has occurred. So if I had all of the sectors here all of my percentages would add up to 100%. Okay, so I'm asking from which sector do the job losses come. So scanning down the percentages here on the right hand side, I can see almost 42% of the job loss came from the accommodation and food services sector. So when you hear that bed and breakfasts and inns and restaurants and catering and so forth are having trouble. Yes, that's absolutely true 42% of the job losses are coming from that sector. Now I should say the most recent data we have are from the third quarter of 2020. So that's July August September 2020. In another couple of months we'll have the fourth quarter of 2020 so this is a bit backwards looking unfortunately. You can see the other sector with big job losses was educational services 10.7% of job loss came from that sector, but also a sizable loss in retail trade in health care and social and arts entertainment and recreation. What's remarkable about all of those sections, all of those sectors. Notice that I haven't talked about manufacturing yet but all the other sectors have very large percentages of women who are employed in those sectors. Okay. So you can understand why it is that women are disproportionately hurting from the pandemic. So in manufacturing we did see 5% of job losses coming from that sector, those do tend to be more male dominated jobs. So that would be the one sector. That's not female dominant. Good. Okay, and here I'm still I'm still sort of reeling with it's close to 30,000 jobs we lost. I mean people who who count as unemployed so yes, so you're not counting the soul proprietors and you're not just counting the discouraged workers. So these are jobs right these are jobs about 30,000 were lost. And back in the fall we did have 30,000 people receiving unemployment insurance benefits. So, there is a bit of a correlation there a connection between jobs lost and people receiving benefits it's not one for one there's some wiggle room in both the jobs and the people but sort of matches up. Because I asked a question. We now have lots of questions. Representative Brumsted and representative Rosenquist. I broke the silence. Yeah, I did raise my hand right when you spoke but the thing about this that I just want to make sure I'm thinking about it straight is that the jobs, you say we lost the jobs but it's not a typical depression, or, you know recession, it's because we asked those jobs to close because we didn't want people to work with COVID. And so there's, I would think a better than half chance that a lot of these jobs will come back for example, the education jobs we know we'll have to come back and the health care jobs are really just the people who weren't working with the patients. A lot of them, you know there wasn't people going in for dermatology visits or for the types of things that are, they were nervous about going in for right if they weren't an emergency they weren't cancer they weren't something that they really had to deal with, but they'll they're all going to come back. And my, the reason I bring this up is that that's where we are now and to me. What we're more now is the flip of this which is we don't have the employees coming back right into the market so those jobs all went away, they all changed maybe their lifestyle in one way or another. And now those jobs are coming back and we have employers saying we can't, especially in the restaurant industry where people are saying we just can't pay them enough to come back. So, I don't really know what my question is but I just think that's important to note that we didn't lose the jobs forever we lost some of them and it would be curious to know down the road how many we really lost that will never come back. Yes, and it's a little bit sad. I know someone who lost a restaurant, but the new person who bought the restaurant just a month ago is you know totally to the wall on it you know they're like crazy busy now and they didn't have the mortgage to pay all those months. We as a society didn't lose the restaurant but the person who happened to own it during the pandemic lost his livelihood. So it's just an interesting, it's such a different experience than we've ever studied before, it seems like. Absolutely. You make a very good point I would just add that we can't be sure that that all the jobs will come back and I know you didn't mean to imply that. It's interesting to think that some manufacturers are moving more to robots. Some ways of delivering services may be changed, you know, we may decide to change the way that we do business in many types of industries. But there is going to be a time of transition where there's a mismatch between the people who want to work and the characteristics of the jobs that are looking for a worker. So again it's going to be an interesting transition period and they're likely to be lots of bumps along the way. Thank you. Representative Rosenquist, your question. Thank you. Yeah, I was just wondering if we were saying that women look like they were disproportionately affected by the pandemic in terms of losing employment. But are there any statistics that show that were they disadvantaged economically worse than men, because of course in many cases they were getting regular unemployment plus either six or $300 of federal unemployment on top of that. And I was just curious, is that play into the fact that these people were more adversely affected or not, or they're, or they don't have to go back into the workforce at this point. Is there any, any way we know that or not. All right, so this gets into a whole nother line of inquiry. I read one statistic saying that 42% of people who are receiving unemployment insurance are actually financially better off with the extra federal benefits and so forth, then they were when they were working. And that says that they were low wage workers. They got their unemployment insurance, which is usually 57% of their average wage, plus they got the $300. They are now getting $300 on top of unemployment insurance, and they're, they may be getting subsidized health insurance. So financially on paper, they may be better off. Now, what you're missing is, yes, but they don't have the connection to work, they're not earning benefits they're not earning time off. They don't, they don't have that, that feeling of, of, you know, being important on the job and so forth. So there are many many factors to consider but but yes you are right that some people are financially better off. And that may be a reason why they are reluctant to go back to the workforce. Yeah, that's the point I was trying to make. Thank you. Sure. Go ahead and I want to warn you, and the committee, you only have 10 minutes before you need to be at your next meeting. So, yes, thank you I'm watching the clock here I just have a few more slides. Okay. Okay, so we just looked at overall job losses by sector. And here next is a chart showing job losses in Vermont by both sector and gender. And you can see that those sectors that have the taller bars, all have taller bars for women, the rose colored bars, except for manufacturing, manufacturing has a taller bar for losses by men. And again, this is just to reinforce that the big job losses happened in the sectors where women were holding more jobs and lost more jobs. Okay. And here I wanted to talk a little bit more about evidence from other states in terms of the women's share. And so we've already talked about the fact that we have a similar labor force to Vermont. Maine was around 55% women on UI benefits when Vermont was at 73%. This was the chart that I used back in the day to show that the Vermont green line for women the dashed line at the top was rising much more rapidly than the colors that orange line for Maine. And again, that may have been overstated. We won't know for sure. But I did want to reinforce the idea that Vermont has more women participating in the labor force than Maine. So, if that's true, we might expect more job losses among women in Vermont than Maine, simply because there are more people more women working in Vermont than in Maine. However, it was surprising to me at the time it's still a little bit surprising to me that women's labor force participation is not that much different in Vermont than in Massachusetts or New Hampshire. So I was surprised I had thought that we had a much higher rate of labor force participation for women than those states but in fact we're about at the same level. Finally, my last slide looks at people 55 and over. And again, we can see that Vermont has a higher older women's labor force participation rate than Maine. But again, we're actually a tiny bit lower than the labor force participation rate for women in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. So that was interesting to me and I thought might be interesting to you as well. So that concludes my slides and thank you all for your attention. If there are further questions, I'm happy to answer. Let me ask representative Wood. Thank you. Just a quick question on the last slide I noticed that there's no US data for men and women broken out just the total is that it's not available by gender or gender. So I recall at the time I was putting these together back in January I was unable to find the US share I think since then I did stumble across the US shares and I should update this slide. Because that would be an interesting, interesting comparison. So I will try to do that. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Joyce. Thank you. Thanks for stopping into house team services. Appreciate that. And we look forward to seeing you more and thanks for the information as we sort of try to figure out who are the unemployed so we can figure out what, if anything, in addition we can do to help them. Thank you. Thank you very much and thanks for your flexibility on the timing. No problem. Well, thank you for the opportunity. We had asked for some, a chart, right, if you recall, on Friday, in terms of continuing our sort of diving into either who are the unemployed and what are what type of assistance and support and help. And I think that's a great idea of Vermont, giving to families, individuals and families during this time. And the deputy commissioner of economic services. Tricia Tio had sort of given us this whole, this laundry list and we all sort of looked a little cross-eyed and said, can you put it together in a list. In true government fashion, the list has to go through the commissioner's office and we don't have it yet. So as soon as we have it, we can go over it and see what it tells us and those kinds of things. I know that at least Mary Beth, if not, and I looked at the hearing on UI and I looked at some of the written testimony, written letters that people sent in. I don't know if anybody else did. Mary Beth, what was your takeaway from that? Thanks Madam Chair. Yeah, I watched it. It was about an hour and a half. It was scheduled for two hours, but I guess a number of people didn't show up for their time slot. But it was, it was, you know, I guess what I expected my, I anticipated that I would hear kind of different trends, trends of issues, but what I was surprised by was the range of issues. It was quite diverse. Everything from just getting through on the phone to still being in an appeals and at, you know, adjudication process, you know, getting reps on the phone who, you know, are not Department of Labor employees and the challenges of that. Like it was really the wide gamut of issues. And the people I was hoping the whole time I was listening that the Department of Labor was literally listening and taking down each name because each person had a very challenging situation that clearly had not been rectified all of the people who spoke. And there were a couple of employers who were concerned about the point Carl brought up earlier. But that was, you know, only a couple who are concerned, but really focused focused on work for, you know, workforce, like hiring people that was there. But yeah, overall, it was, I mean, it really, really was like a wake up call relative to our mainframe system and all of that, like we really need to replace that for sure. That was my impression to but in thinking about what is our focus, you know, we get to pass on the fact that they were having issues with the Department of Labor to another committee. But if I'm looking at so what was the theme, the theme is, they need cash, they need money. I mean, that's what people to be good they need financial assistance, they need the what they were doing. The reason they were talking was because they needed the dollars that the unemployment insurance was was doing that and there's even there's I guess there's a question out there, whether or not they were able to access or receive them the, the, the checks that they did not receive because of the delays or because of the, the issues with the name, the mainframe and so what I was sort of, I guess naively hoping in listening to some of this that that would be identification of what they needed the money for or they need something else. Really, I mean it's like, what, what the unemployed Vermonters seem to need is financial assistance to pay their bills. And that's what I got out of everything. I don't know if anyone else besides Mary Beth and I had nothing better to do this weekend read that if anyone else looked at that kinds of stuff. I looked at some of the letters and actually looked because I had done the unemployment thing you know way back last summer. And so I went back and I have a whole folder on it and I was looking up some childcare stuff and there was unemployment and I thought I should look at this for next week. And it seemed I agree about the IT stuff that was their biggest thing is not talking to humans that had any idea where you know they felt like they didn't even know where Vermont was which seemed odd to me because I don't think we had people from India helping so but I had to say there's some people in the United States who think that Vermont is a city. That's true. But what the other thing was that was that time that they didn't have their unemployment all figured out and they so they were living with no money at all and had maybe three little kids and actually it was the parent child centers that over and over again in my letters that I read again had saved them because they went in and said I'm not hearing from unemployment nobody's helping me and parent child center had that extra money that we had allocated to them last summer and they were using that money to help some of these folks out and so I agree that it's the money in the end they just needed to be able to pay their bills to get them to a point where they were connected into the unemployment system and then they did much better and the most letters seem to come from the people with children. It seemed like those were the ones who were really feeling the pain of not having enough to take care of everyone at home. So I also that makes me think about the parent child center and they're what they're hoping for as well to be able to have that fund that they can use to help families that are really in crisis. The other thing I would add is overwhelmingly the number of women who testified definitely that reflects the numbers that we saw today. And the other thing is what we've read you know on the national level about child care and I heard you heard from, you know, a number of witnesses with children who were like, you know my employer wants me to get back I'm trying to work from home I don't I lost my child care. You know it doesn't make sense for me like just this unbelievable like pulled in different directions and trying to balance this whole thing. Um, so that that I definitely heard, you know, hopefully, let's keep our fingers crossed that what we passed in terms of h 171 and the money in there will help with that. Yep. Absolutely. You know, um, so we're really so, um, you know, I want us to wait, you know, we're really we're sort of on a fact finding mission, and we're missing some information and when we get that we'll see what that is and see if there's a silver bullet, or not in terms of anything that we can do. We are in the last fingers crossed the last two weeks of the legislative session and congratulations committee we were. Dane did a knocked it out of the park and Senate Health and Welfare Dane do you want to say what happened this morning. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, 9am this morning we had a chat. We had a quick walkthrough of our amendment answered a few questions, David Englander from the Department of Health was there and they passed it out of committee 50 with approval, and it just got voted out of the Senate today. So it is, it is through. And it's way to the governor's office. And I will pass on to you I have gotten a copy of two. National articles that that got generated. And I don't know actually I won't have to. Did you all get them. I got one. I will I will pass them to everybody. I'll make sure that everybody, you know, has those two Senator Lyons is quoted in one and the other, I think is is just saying what we did collectively on what we did so that that is good. Jessica, you did a fabulous job of reporting on stage 171 on the house floor and that little hiccup. Got got through and I happened to be listening to the Senate. And actually, Dane, I think you were still in the committee room but they, they decided to talk about it. And actually, I think had Katie go through it. At the end of their meeting this morning. And Jenny informed them that it was fine. And that it had been all worked out and that so when that happened when that gets over to the Senate, I think that it, that it should be smooth sailing. The snafu in terms of language and all of that. Actually, I didn't see the email until after, but we had gotten the, we got sort of the check, okay, from the Senate chair of appropriations, Senator Kitchell, and from the House chair of appropriations representative Cooper. And so, as well as joint fiscal, which seemed to be an important third party on, you know, on this. So, it should be smooth sailing. And tomorrow morning, we're going to, in terms of our committee meeting will one we're going to get shall I say an issues update from the Department of Children and Family. I'm going in issues update like on their ongoing projects, not necessarily a problems update, but rather, they have three sort of ongoing things that we might be interested in, or we are. One is their progress to date on the back it, I forget what it's now called the replacement of a locked facility for justice involved youth. Representative would, your hand went up before I started talking so go ahead. No. It's always, I'll wait you're done madam chair. Okay, thank you bridges. Thank you. Okay, update uncovered bridges. Thank you. I'll remember. An update or sort of what is this all about many of us read this interesting article in Vermont digger about the plan of the department to bring into play on specialized foster homes or professional foster homes to deal to perhaps bring the over 100 youth children and youth who are an out of state placements. And this was interesting and important to to hear about and I thought perhaps we could understand what this was about was just addressing what kind of children you know what children are we talking about and does that mean that we can remove from the budget language that we have in the budget that references that they'll come back with some sort of an assessment of what is the payment rate for foster care workers. So, okay, I have a question. This is my favorite. How many of you have pets. Have you ever boarded your pet. Okay Jessica you don't have your things on how much does it cost a night to board your pet. I have two so we pay like $60, I think are 40. It's between 30. What are you going to do charge your, your friend there to take care of the dog. No, no, no, I didn't charge anything. No, Topper this was I want to make sure that my statement still held, which is, it costs more to board your pet than what the state is as a stipend to foster care. Parents, which at the low end is $19 and maybe at the high end is 30 something like that. So we you know, anyway, so that's the second one and the third one is, there is that large federal law that passed a couple of years ago. The Family First Prevention Act, which requires the state to have a plan by October, as to how they were going to meet the various components of it and perhaps these professional foster homes is their way of doing that. But so those are the three updates that we're going to have tomorrow. I'll stop there because Teresa's hand is still up. I was just checking out the agenda madam chair and there are a few things that appropriations is waiting for us to get back to them on. I know represent Whitman has a report on one, I have a report on one, and I don't know if anybody else does and if we could get the sort of the committees. Okay, then we can give them some feedback, some official feedback. Well I am I am I am hoping that we can do some of that right now. That works. Because it's not even four o'clock. And, and so before we do that I'm like quite excited. So, Jessica, I'm not sure how, when they're going to do, you know, I'm not sure if you know when formally that they will act on 171, or whether since they took it up, that's enough as to whether or not you'll need to go in there or not. Yeah, but also I wanted my you know this was a big day for us. We had two things on the calendar. Taylor this was your, your, I mean, not your first time talking on the floor you seem to talk on the floor a lot. No, but it was your first bill report and congratulations. Thank you thank you. Do enjoy talking on the floor for sure. Well, you do it well. You know, and so that seemed to go smoothly and because it's treated as a bill that will be up again tomorrow. And so and that sort of will be our. So, you know, as a whole our committee had a bang up day around three of our issues so that's pretty exciting. Wonderful. Okay, so last new subject focused on what Teresa was talking about. And I, I referenced this is the budget in terms of what's in the budget, which I don't know. I don't know how much of a change will happen. But if we go on the joint fiscal web page. Now, there is a new update or a new set of directions from the federal government about use of ARPA funds that may may impact some things. However, given what we have right now. The small piece was sort of around what what I was referencing that's in Dan and James's ballpark which was the language around foster care and they're like, can we just pull that out now I'm like, can we like find out how real this proposal is and what this is before we do that. But Teresa and Dane. Why don't you move to your stuff. Dane, why don't you go ahead about the substance use. Sounds good. Thanks Teresa. So just an update from appropriations and we've reviewed this in the past but I just wanted to follow up to make sure. In our original recommendation, you might recall that we talked about the kind of wage gap between masters level clinicians, working for designated agencies and specialized service agencies. And we proposed some funds to sort of bridge that gap, at least part way. Since then, we've sort of shifted gears within appropriation to identify that there was already this large fund that was designated towards workforce development. And it was a $5 million fund to begin with and the thinking was let's just use this money. Since over the weekend I followed up to confirm how much money is left in that fund. Right now it's 1.5 million. And which is still, you know, it's comparable with what we asked for, as far as bridging bridging the gap I think we had about 450,000 general fund for the substance use clinicians. So, but looked at the language that's in the latest draft of the budget and it's also really more targeted towards workforce development as far as tuition and loan repayment. Kind of like what we had within the childcare bill, as far as really going and addressing those dollars in a more targeted way towards loan repayment, tuition assistance for people seeking continued education and was interested in hearing people's thoughts on that. Dana, I got a little lost. Sorry. Is this just talking about what our committee's recommendation was because there was also language. Is that what you were talking about as well there was also language that I may not have run by you but that representative Lippert and I made sure that the old, the languishing money. That's the 5 million, which is what was to go, not for loan repayment but the purpose was to raise was to go into the pockets of to go I mean to go to direct service workers as cash. As their salary increase that so are you saying they don't want to do that and they want to turn that into workforce development money. Within the most recent draft that we received from Peter, and I can share it with you now. It did seem to be more framed as far as tuition and loan based repayment. Okay. So, man chair. Yeah, so that was money that was supposed to have gone out. Two years ago. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I was involved in the group with with appropriations three years ago. And we developed this whole plan, along with bill Lippert. So, the other thing that will impact this is that in the Senate version, they have up the cola to home and community based providers from the 2% that was in the house to 3% that as past the Senate so hopefully that will stick. That will be able to impact salaries at the designated and specialized service agencies as well. So I think what Dana saying is that they haven't changed the original intent of that money they're just now going to get it out the door. Our specific salary bump request is not is not there, but by providing a reduction of people's expenses through, you know, tuition payments and loan repayments then hopefully that will have a positive impact as well. I appreciate that I'm not willing to have our committee make that agreement because that language was negotiated between representative Lippert and I to go into the budget. Very specifically for not for loan repayment. There are increases to alcohol and drug providers in community health center. And I'm just double checking madam chair, we had a. We had information from representative Fagan. He said that he had checked with health committee but I'm just double checking that. So, I'll get back to you on that. That's, Dane has just forwarded that to me and I will get back to representative Lippert and might I ask the other, the other groups that when you get written things from your person on appropriations if you could forward it to me as well, because at this point in time, there are about seven people who will call and ask for input. And sometimes that they ask me, and I'd like to not give in inappropriate information or whatever. But thank you for will figure that out. But it sounds like what they're, I mean, would we not like the increase in the cola. I mean I hope we're supporting the increasing in the cola. Okay. I mean, I am I don't know I'm presuming the rest of the committee will support a increase in cola but. Yeah, I hopefully you didn't get from anything that we said that we will. No, no, that is, that is fine. Call Kelly. If we're talking about budget related stuff I when we hear from DCF tomorrow, I, we would also. I would also I think the rest of the committee also would like to hear about the RFP process for the CIS and family services division transportation contract. And I think what we hear. There may be discussion about something in the budget related to that just. Okay, waiting for some more information do we do. Yeah. Julie. I'm sorry. Thanks Julie, could you send a follow up email to the crew at DCF that are coming tomorrow and ask them that hope that one of the people who is coming will be able to speak to the RFP. It is going out around transportation for CIS. I'm sorry, excuse me. One of his speaking to the transportation RFP is there more than one. No, I don't think so. Okay, the same person who's speaking to back it is going to speak to the transportation RFP. Thank you. Just wanted to make sure that was still on the docket for tomorrow and that keep it flagged for something in the budget but we're hoping a little bit more information first thank you. Cool, cool. And, Teresa and topper, have you as the housing has the homelessness emergency homelessness plan group gotten together, or had any movement. Yes. I can't remember what day it was. Yesterday. Yesterday. Teresa, did you send what came back from Kimberley to the chair. I have, I have not because it's not. She was still accepting input from other members of the little committee so I didn't want to send multiple copies. But essentially what, what appropriations was looking for was for the group of us and so other members know they were represented from Human Services Healthcare House general and appropriations was to focus in on supportive services However, we did broaden our scope because you know us we wanted to comment on a bunch of things. And it was to provide a letter back to the working group that had been working on this emergency housing proposal, and they're not going to do that right away. However, they're going to wait until after budget negotiations are done, given that things may shift a little in that process and so that. So essentially, you know, there's a draft letter that's going around among these eight members of this little group for input right now. And it's kind of just a really a laundry list of things additional things we'd like them to consider if they haven't considered and suggestions, because they're going to continue to be working on this. So as soon as we have something that looks like it's been through the full group then we'll certainly share it back with committee. We're putting our faith in you to solve the issue. Now we're not solving the issue. You know what it became clear to me was that, you know, we were providing particular points of feedback about things we want them to consider that perhaps didn't rise to the top of the proposal list and so that's, that's kind of what the letter does. And a few of us brought up the issues that attorney read, but I don't know how to pronounce your last name or Radbug read something like that from legal aid had brought up specifically around the budget language that's not going in the letter because that will all be happening sort of outside but we express some support for a version of that language. And the issue around food, you know what happens when sort of like foods been being provided and all of a sudden now it stops. And that did not seem like it was, frankly, addressed at all and the proposal that was was put forth. It just seemed like okay now the communities will take care of that and that's they're going to work on it didn't we hear. They were going to work on it. Yeah, and there's so and there's obviously dates looming very quickly when that will happen so and then you know there was again a bit quite a big discussion around the proposal the Senate's budget does not include money for emergency for permanent housing for homeless individuals. And the House General Committee members were not in favor of that. So they were sending the appropriations members with that kind of feedback during appropriations negotiations. Well thank you thank you for carrying the mantle for us that's important. Taylor. A quick question in regards to the emergency housing. If I was reading the budget correctly which I am unsure that I am. When we were first looking at the budget way back in the beginning, there was $6.9 million that DCF was looking to move to community agencies around this emergency housing plan. I believe that that money is still set to move. Again if I'm reading this correctly and I was wondering if you had any more information on that if they are still planning on moving forward with this transition to community versus keeping it in DCF. Yeah I asked that question specifically Taylor, because it was unclear to me from the presentation that we saw last week about, you know, what was the status of that and the appropriation committee members believe that this is a transition year and that that won't happen to 2023. I'm not sure that the budget fully reflects that yet but that is what the appropriations committee members believe is happening. Okay. I suppose we can confirm that tomorrow. That would be wonderful if you could. I met in our committee when we hear from DCS. Yeah. Okay I'll ask the commissioner tomorrow. If you really want me to I'm happy. I didn't get that feeling at all that they were going, that they were going to do it. The agencies that they were going to do it with not ready to do it. I don't think they're going to be ready next year either. I agree with you Topper that's why I was worried at seeing it in the budget. Yeah. We will see. One of the things that was pointed out in this is that essentially, you know what this plan is doing and you know why we have a short term financing proposal for we meaning the global we. It's double the number of people being served in the emergency housing program than what was pre pandemic. So that's, that's a big lift in terms of what it is that we would need to look at on an ongoing basis but is probably a closer reflection to the number of people who are homeless in need of assistance than what we were doing prior to the pandemic. And number of families to Right. Families. Yeah. I'm cool. The other two. I don't believe that we did we did we make any recommendations that included the parent child centers. I'm not remembering anything specific other than their participation in CIS and childcare. And we didn't because we knew that they had that big bill over at this on the Senate side to fix their base. And then the Senate took half of that and put it in one time only dollars. And so that's sort of what happened here I was actually just looking. I have it printed somewhere on this desk for the memo that we sent over but I'm pretty sure that we didn't that we just sent to our appropriations committee back in. And I don't think that parent child center was in it. I mean, that is an area of difference between the house and the Senate, as well as an appropriation for the food shelf. So those are sort of two areas that are different between the house and the Senate. There's also something in there is about the donor bank for breast milk. For I think 25,000. Does that sound right. I'm not sure but I, I was surprised to see that it got added in the last minute I think it's again one time only so it's not a base project. She asked Kimberly about it and she was going to check it out. I haven't gotten anything written from Kimberly at this point but she did tell me this morning that she's nervous because of the new rules that have come or new guidance from the feds. And she, I said okay well, she said I think that we're okay but there might be enough other people not okay that it could impact us so we're going to have to learn more. It's the week goes on I'm sure. Okay. Jeffrey Pippinger just sent me the a couple page document which I'm going to send to all of you and Julie can can post. It's a timeline of benefit programs. I have to say that right looking at it right now. I need, I need some time before I can interpret it. You all might be able to interpret it better than I can. But in terms of what are what assistance families currently are getting. And that kind of thing. So, we will figure. We will figure that out. I'm still back to I think you're out I mean, we are I mean Mary Beth you talked about how you and Jessica about how it's childcare, I mean that they put some of what they said, but otherwise it's, they needed help accessing enough money to pay their bills kind of thing. This is sort of going to be I guess yes, Teresa. I did just want to mention that the $5 million that was in our budget memo one time funds for the adult day programs was put in the Senate as was retained in the Senate I should say because the house had it. And then there is language that the adult day programs are supportive of that enables this to also be used to try to reinstate or replace those services that were lost in the three areas of the state. As well as to be able to carry those funds over if they're not all used in FY 22 that that language seemed to be very supportive of the adult days and the amount was the same and they they worked with the adult generation on it so I, I'd recommend that we are supportive of that. Anyone have any problem with Teresa and Dan and Carl saying that passing that on passing the, we support what the $5 million. We already did that. Well right well we just want you know to reinforce and that we also support the, the language, the additional language. Was that in our amendment or not, I'm trying to recall. There's no letter. So in a letter okay. Okay, half of it was coming from one time dollars. This is all coming from one time dollars. $5 million is all one time dollars. Okay, I will pass that on to represent Yacoboni. Good, good work. I of course am curious, as probably won't be coming that quickly is the $8 million that the health department's going to get for opioid treatment. There was some there was that was in the newspaper, you know that that he's gotten an earmark for for Vermont. And it's going to the health department I'm curious as to what they're going to do with it for when it's going to come, I mean, you know that kind of thing. So, um, before we end for for this afternoon, is there anything else that we sort of in this laundry list of what the last couple of weeks last two weeks are. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.